Cosmic Cadillac
John P David
> How do you feel about the second law of thermodynamics?
A person could feel this or that way *about* it, I suppose, but at my age, I
am feeling the Second Law of Thermodynamics quite directly, right in my
bones, in the increased time it takes to remember stuff, short-term
memory-wise; walking a mile is more like going ten? Even so, you can't be
going around all depressed about the Entropy of things because of the
happiness we may find in First Law of Thermodynamics which makes it all
better. Certainly! For you realize that nothing is *really* being
lost--scattered, yes, disintegrated, dispersed, yes, colder, more distant,
all those things, but that is of no real consequence because everything is
being conserved, and no matter how cold and spread apart everything gets,
still, nothing is lost, and all is still right here, according to the First
Law of Thermodynamics in the conservation of mass and energy.
How do I feel about it?
Okay, consider this: Nothing is being lost *because* nothing in the
universe truly moves in a straight line. Try and dig it: Einstein has
demonstrated that space is curved. Yet any fool can see that by simply
looking at any atom, any Hubble photo of a spiral galaxy, at the rotation of
the earth, the revolutions of the moon, the solar system--everything is
turning, curving, coming back around eventually.
That is how all mass and energy is being conserved, because of one
magnificently fabulous fact: while it may appear that by force of the
Second Law of Thermodynamics, all things must extend infinitely into
entropic dispersion, actually this is not as it might seem. There is, in a
sense, a finite "edge" or outer "circumference" to the universe which is not
so much spatial as it is temporal.
Conceive for a moment, the universe as an apparently infinite sphere. Now
imagine some body, say a rocket-ship blasting off from a planet at the
center of the universe along a 'straight' radial course toward the outer
circumference of the infinite sphere.
Now when we are saying that this sphere is "infinite", how do we mean that
to be understood? Let us first take the notion at face value, and
understand it in a purely spatial, geometric sense. Okay, now we recognize
that this said sphere of the universe is comprised of nothing except the
mass of the bodies that are in it. All those bodies, these masses are
moving. Good, so the universe is moving, it is turning, it is spinning,
revolving. Our rocket-ship, no matter what it's initial velocity at
blast-off, the further it moves toward the outer reaches of the sphere of
the universe, it must accelerate due to the angular velocity of the universe
itself. this is no different than what happens to a child who sits on the
revolving disk in the fun house. The further you slide away from the
center, the more you are taken by the centrifugal force and pulled, as it
were, to the circumference of the spinning disk until you are thrown off the
edge into the padded mats.
Now what great fun it is to realize that the same thing happens to anything
made of matter, like our rocket-ship, or indeed any star or cluster of
stars, and galaxy that is in motion through the sphere of the universe.
The further we move from the center the faster we go, or as Robert Hunter,
lyricist for the Grateful Dead once entitled a song, "The Faster We Go, the
Rounder We Get!"
But the universe is *infinite* and this means that as our rocket-ship nears
in its journey the circumference of the universe, being driven by the
centrifugal force of the entire sphere, we are approaching infinite angular
velocity--and what is that? Is that the Speed of Light? Is there no
velocity faster than that at which light travels?
Is 186,000 miles per second the speed at which matter becomes transformed
into energy, i.e. "light"? No. That is merely the speed at which light
travels. What is the speed at which light is generated? At what speed is
matter transformed into light energy? What does Einstein mean by providing
for us in his theory the concept of C-squared--what is that all about? What
is being described? The formula is so simple! Energy is defined as mass
(matter) being multiplied, or let us say *trajected* at the square of light
velocity.
Now, just as there is such a thing as a *sound barrier* here on earth with
its atmosphere, a speed at which any object traveling faster than the speed
of sound produces a *sonic boom*, then also there is a *light barrier*, the
velocity of light, above which speed--BOOM--any mass is immediately
accelerated to C-squared, is thrown off that infinite edge of the spinning
disk in the Cosmic Fun House as it achieves Infinite Velocity.
Let's have some *real* fun.
At Infinite Velocity any "body" is moving so fast that, clearly, it can be
everywhere at once. In being omnipresent throughout the Cosmic Sphere, it
is also right back to the beginning again at the center, as indeed, that is
precisely where "being everywhere at once" is, as such, in the Cosmic
Spherical sense, as according to reasons directly to follow.
Now, what do we see? There is *in a sense* a finite edge or circumference
to the Cosmic Sphere but it is not "spatial", for Einstein has shown that
space and time are one, are spacetime, and what is spacetime but something
like a description of velocity or speed, as any body or particle or photon
in motion is extended in both space and time, as that speed of motion is
described as factors of distance (space) and time.
The outer limit of the universe is not confined by space, as such, but more
by time, by spacetime, by speed, or which is to say *angular velocity* where
at the circumference, the centrifugal force of the Cosmic Sphere is so
intense that any mass which finds its way that far from the center has come
to a point at which not space, but velocity is the Outer Limit beyond which
no body can extend without being transformed to energy at the spacetime
"circumference" of the Cosmic Sphere.
Why don't we see the light coming from the Light Barrier? The answer is in
what follows.
What's ecstatically fun is to consider that in view of these things, there
is no longer any reason to think of any sort of conflict between Big Bang
and Steady State cosmologies. It's both. The Big Bang is always happening
in a Steady State. The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics are what
keep the whole rig in motion. There is no reason to ponder, anymore any
temporal moment at which the Universe came into being since it is always
coming into being and going out into non-being at C2, into the Black Hole
that exists outside the circumference of the sphere which is the same Black
Hole that exists at its center--in which all the light from the Light
Barrier is held back from our sight. It is a Black Hole of Time, more
properly considered than one of Space--but both. It is a Black Hole of
Infinite Velocity, the speed at which the Cosmic Sphere folds back in upon
itself, infinitely and eternally, both Centrifugally and Centripetally.
The Cosmic Sphere of the Universe is a perpetual motion machine which is
described by the First Law of Thermodynamics in the Conservation of Matter
and Energy. All that seems to be lost by the Second Law is regained by the
First in a huge Yin-Yang of power exchange. The huge centrifugal forces
operating at the Outer Edge of the Sphere are identical to the centripetal
forces of "gravity" in play from the center.
There is no such thing as a "graviton" particle. In fact there really is no
such thing as "gravity", there is only, as Einstein has shown in GR, its
*equivalent* which is *inertia* come as a result of the relative momentum
between the earth and any body on its surface. Because the earth is in
motion, we are in motion with it, and because the earth is in a continual
state of acceleration (since all angular velocity *is* acceleration) we are
continually being pressed back in our seats, as it were, in this Cosmic
Cadillac known as Planet Earth.
--
JPDavid long_go...@nobodyfeelsanypain.com
John's Joint:: http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
On-Line Novel, *Amador Green*, MP3's and Usenet Archive
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. --Friedrich
Nietzsche
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of
tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson
"I like Vincent because, like me, he has the habit of alienating almost
everyone he meets. --Toulouse Lautrec
smw
John P David wrote:
>"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message
>
>>How do you feel about the second law of thermodynamics?
>>
>
>A person could feel this or that way *about* it, I suppose, but at my age, I
>am feeling the Second Law of Thermodynamics quite directly, right in my
>bones, in the increased time it takes to remember stuff, short-term
>memory-wise; walking a mile is more like going ten? Even so, you can't be
>going around all depressed about the Entropy of things
>
Let me rephrase the question -- is the 2nd law of thermodynamics subject
to the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
s
John P David
"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CD13754...@umich.edu...
> Let me rephrase the question -- is the 2nd law of thermodynamics subject
> to the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
But Professor Dearest, is this truly all you can ask, after your eyes have
been inside an essay in which the greatest mysteries of the universe are
explained and solved?
Here it is again, at your convenience, the explanation as to why the Second
Law of Thermodynamics is most certainly subject to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, on account of being subject to the First Law of
Thermodynamics. . .
--
You can't be going around all depressed about the Entropy of things because
of the happiness we may find in First Law of Thermodynamics which makes it
all better. Nothing is *really* being lost--scattered, yes, disintegrated,
dispersed, yes, colder, more distant, all those things, but that is of no
real consequence because everything is being conserved, and no matter how
cold and spread apart everything gets, still, nothing is lost, and all is
still right here, according to the First Law of Thermodynamics in the
conservation of mass and energy.
How do I feel about it?
Okay, consider this: Einstein has demonstrated that space is curved. Even
we can see this by simply looking at any atom, any Hubble photo of a spiral
galaxy, at the rotation of the earth, the revolutions of the moon, the solar
system--everything is turning, curving, coming back around eventually.
That is how all mass and energy is being conserved, because of one
magnificently fabulous fact: everything is coming back around because there
are no straight lines in a curved space. While it may appear that by force
of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all things must extend infinitely into
entropic dispersion, actually this is prevented because there is, in a
sense, a finite "edge" or outer "circumference" to the universe.
Conceive for a moment, the universe as an apparently infinite sphere. Now
imagine some body, say a rocket-ship blasting off from a planet at the
center of the universe along a 'straight' radial course toward the outer
circumference of the infinite sphere.
Now while we are saying that this sphere is "infinite", how do we mean that
to be understood? Let us first take the notion at face value, and
understand it in a purely spatial, geometric sense. Okay, now we recognize
that this said sphere of the universe is comprised of nothing except the
mass of the bodies that are in it. All those bodies, these masses are
moving. Good, so the universe is moving, it is turning, it is spinning,
revolving. Our rocket-ship, no matter what it's initial velocity at
blast-off, the further it moves toward the outer reaches of the sphere of
the universe, it must accelerate due to the angular velocity of the universe
itself. this is no different than what happens to a child who sits on the
revolving disk in the fun house. The further you slide away from the
center, the more you are taken by the centrifugal force and pulled, as it
were, to the circumference of the spinning disk until you are thrown off the
edge into the padded mats.
Now what great fun it is to realize that the same thing happens to anything
made of matter, like our rocket-ship, or indeed any star or cluster of
stars, and galaxy that is in motion toward the outer circumference of the
universe.
The further we move from the center the faster we go, or as Robert Hunter,
lyricist for the Grateful Dead once entitled a song, "The Faster We Go, the
Rounder We Get!"
But the universe is *infinite* and this means that as our rocket-ship nears
in its journey the circumference of the universe, being driven faster and
faster by the centrifugal force of the entire sphere, we are approaching
infinite angular velocity!
But wait. Is that the Speed of Light? No. That is merely the speed at
which light travels. Infinite velocity is the speed at which light is
created, at which mass is entirely transformed into electro-magnetic light
energy. Einstein provides for us the concept of C-squared, and what is
being described? The formula is so simple, so fun! Energy is defined as
mass (matter) being multiplied, or let us say, to be more graphic,
*trajected* toward, "thrown at" the edge of the universe, by a force equal
to its own mass being smashed against itself at the square of light
velocity.
Now, just as there is such a thing as a *sound barrier* here on earth with
its atmosphere, a speed at which any body traveling faster than the speed of
sound produces a *sonic boom*, then also there is a *light barrier*, the
velocity of light, above which speed--BOOM--any mass is immediately
accelerated to C-squared, to be thrown off, thrown at, that barrier, that
infinite edge of the spinning
disk in the Cosmic Fun House at Infinite Velocity.
Let's have some *real* fun.
At Infinite Velocity any "body" is moving so fast that, clearly, it can be
everywhere at once. It *is* everywhere at once. In being omnipresent
throughout the Cosmic Sphere, it is also right back to the beginning again
at the center, as indeed, that is precisely where "being everywhere at once"
is, as such, in the Cosmic Spherical sense, as according to reasons directly
to follow.
What do we see? There is, only *in a sense*, a finite spatial edge or
circumference to the Cosmic Sphere which is defined as an edge of space, not
by space but by spacetime, by Infinite Velocity at which the circumference
of an infinite mass, the Cosmos, turns: Einstein has shown that space and
time are one, are spacetime, and what is spacetime but something like a
description of velocity, the two factors, distance (space) and time.
The centrifugal force at the circumference of the Cosmic Sphere is so
intense that any mass which finds its way that far from the center has come
to an Outer Limit beyond which no body can extend without being entirely
contracted and transformed to light energy.
Why don't we see the light coming from the Light Barrier? The answer is in
what follows.
What's ecstatically fun is to consider that in view of these things, there
is no longer any reason to think of any sort of conflict between Big Bang
and Steady State cosmologies. It's both. The Big Bang is always happening
in a Steady State. The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics are what
keep the whole rig in motion. There is no reason to ponder, anymore any
temporal moment at which the Universe came into being since it is always
coming into being and going out into non-being at C2, into the Black Hole
that exists outside the circumference of the sphere which is the same Black
Hole that exists at its center--in which all the light from the Light
Barrier is held back from our sight. It is a Black Hole of Time, more
properly considered, than one of Space--but both. It is a Black Hole of
smw
John P David wrote:
>"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CD13754...@umich.edu...
>
>>Let me rephrase the question -- is the 2nd law of thermodynamics subject
>>to the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
>>
>
>But Professor Dearest, is this truly all you can ask, after your eyes have
>been inside an essay in which the greatest mysteries of the universe are
>explained and solved?
>
In other words, you now do understand how uncertainty can be certain,
just as change is eternal?
s
John P David
"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CD1BC89...@umich.edu...
Let us first see if your analogy is right on the money. Let's begin by
reverting to the utility of some _a priori_ principles of
Thomist/Aristotelian theological epistemology as we argue _a posteriori_ and
teleologically back toward them to see if they are justified. Of one thing,
all theologians are certain: God is absolute and eternal. This is just one
way of saying that the Divinity is Unchanging and Eternal. If the Divinity
is the Eternal and the Unchanging, then let us suggest that nothing other
than the Divinity is Eternal, and nothing other than the Divinity is the
Absolute, the Unchanging.
In this way, we have shown that "change" is anything except the "eternal",
as indeed *change* is precisely the opposite of the eternal. Nothing can be
eternally changing, because the minute it changes it is by definition not
eternal but changing. This is because the eternal is also the Absolute.
Now, we can simply remove the name "God" and the term, "the Divinity" from
the dialectic to replace that name and that term with the two essential
concepts, the Absolute and the Eternal as they are found to be son and
daughter of one mother concept, which shall remain nameless and _a priori_
and known only to us as the Absolutely Eternal and/or the Eternally
Absolute.
Since we can now see that your analogy will not hold due to a fault in the
notion that the changing may be the eternal, then also in another sense,
your analogy does hold, as it stands to refute by the same fault of
contradiction the notion that the Uncertain may be Certain.
Aristotle was quite right to say that nothing may both be and not be at
once. Otherwise nothing logical or rational may ever be stated or decided.
N'est ce pas, Ma Cher Professeur?
James Whitehead
<dadd...@yahoo.com> writes
>Of one thing,
>all theologians are certain: God is absolute and eternal.
Is this true? Would the idea of a universe evolving into a God not be a
valid theology? Or a universe growing on the dead remains of a
divinity...
--
James Whitehead
smw
John P David wrote:
>"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CD1BC89...@umich.edu...
>
>>
>>John P David wrote:
>>
>>>"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CD13754...@umich.edu...
>>>
>>>>Let me rephrase the question -- is the 2nd law of thermodynamics subject
>>>>to the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
>>>>
>>>But Professor Dearest, is this truly all you can ask, after your eyes
>>>
>have
>
>>>been inside an essay in which the greatest mysteries of the universe are
>>>explained and solved?
>>>
>>In other words, you now do understand how uncertainty can be certain,
>>just as change is eternal?
>>
>
>Let us first see if your analogy is right on the money. Let's begin by
>reverting to the utility of some _a priori_ principles of
>Thomist/Aristotelian theological epistemology as we argue _a posteriori_ and
>teleologically back toward them to see if they are justified. Of one thing,
>all theologians are certain: God is absolute and eternal.
>
Nonsense. Only the God of the _Republic_ who doesn't change form and
hence doesn't act and hence is entirely irrelevant to life on earth is
"absolute and eternal" -- as soon as God does stuff, as in Jewish and
Christian theology, he ceases to be "unchanging."
s
John P David
"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CD288D0...@umich.edu...
> Nonsense.
Tut tut. Was that nice?
Let's make a deal, Professor Darling: let's both be nice.
> Only the God of the _Republic_ who doesn't change form and . . .
Read the Metaphysics of Aristotle where you'll find the same God, as Prime
Mover who moves all that does move by remaining unmoved--of course, how
else? Then having seen that, you will know how this became also the God
understood by Rome through the work of Thomas who studied Aristotle till he
was blue in the face.
> hence doesn't act and hence is entirely irrelevant to life on earth is
> "absolute and eternal" -- as soon as God does stuff, as in Jewish and
> Christian theology, he ceases to be "unchanging."
But now you see how God can do stuff, specifically by not moving. By
remaining the same and unchanged. By this, man is able to discern God
amongst the flux of all that does move and change. God from the very
beginning has already done it all, answered every prayer, parted the Red
Sea, it had all been done by God's power to make all things move and part
before His immutable will. It only remains for man to come up to it in faith
to say, "Look what God hath already provided for at this moment to be." Lo
and behold, the Red Sea was indeed parted even before Moses had perhaps
fully brought down his staff.
That is why God was wroth with Moses for striking the rock at Meribah, when
God had told him rather, merely to speak to the rock, that it might bring
forth water. Moses had mistakenly thought that he, by his staff was doing
what God had already done from long before the time that the worlds had been
created, allowing from the beginning of time, that at such a time, should
Moses be walking right, then this thing would be. But it required for Moses
in Egypt to be like God, to be firm, and unmoving without a shade of turning
in his resolve, to be like a rock. Nothing in the History of the Jews is
ever done "by God" except through the agency, the prayers and prophecy of
man--whether by man's will to do the will of God or as man moves against
God's unshakeable will, he comes to suffer the consequences of that to be
whacked by all the other things God had put into motion from the beginning.
It's all to do with Man's movements, not God's.
Lewis Mammel
The 2nd law of thermodynamics isn't subject to the 2nd law of
thermodynamics any more than the Law of Universal Gravitation
is subject to the Law of Universal Gravitation. How could it
be? What can you even mean by this question?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Richard Harter
I opine that your argument doesn't hold, i.e., God (a god of the absolute
and eternal variety) can effect change in the here and now without changing.
As an analogy consider catalysts. Chemical catalysts do change; more
precisely they change during the course of a reaction but end up in their
original state. However mechanical catalysts need not change; they may
merely provide a convenient place for some event to occur. Similarly the
A&E God can effect change without being changed. Moreover there isn't any
real difficulty in imagining it as having a will.
The A&E God can appear to "do stuff" from the perspective of the inhabitants
of the here and now but that doing of stuff does not necessarily meant that
the A&E God is changing during the process.
The Jewish God is reported as though it were a person that has moods and
changes and very much is not an A&E God. One might think the same of the
Christian God; however the Church did not have difficulty in marrying
Plato and Jehovah.
James Whitehead
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
do not apply, then the law itself can live there too, and so also the
post-modernists who can step out of 12 story windows and float gently
to the ground.
--
James Whitehead
Lewis Mammel
> do not apply, then the law itself can live there too, ...
The laws of thermodynamics apply, in Reif's statement, to "systems
consisting of very many particles" , so there is no need to start looking
for exempted categories. The realm of discourse has been duly limited
from the outset.
Interestingly, Reif sets forth his topic in terms of discourse:
"... we are ready to turn our attention to the main subject of this
book, the discussion of systems consisting of very many particles."
A curious involution, as one might have thought that the subject
of the book would be properties of, or interaction of, such systems,
but he said it!
> ... and so also the
> post-modernists who can step out of 12 story windows and float gently
> to the ground.
Well, this is a contentious choice of an example, and I'm not sure
why you made it. Just by way of renewing the challenge perhaps?
But since you mention it, I'll restate my own point of view that
this challenge, and especially the self-satisfaction implcit in
making it, is blockheaded. One might just as easily attribute the
certainty of falling to the ever-vigilant and jealous demons of the
air as to an abstract Law of the Universe ... enforced by whom BTW?
... and by what means?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
It seems to me that to say that uncertainty is certain isn't half the
paradox people want it to be. I've seen this argument brought against
anything from Nietzsche to decon with a smugness that has always
astonished me --- "it's the liar's paradox! and how smart I am to see this!"
Barbara Herrnstein-Smith has a fine and detailed refutation, but it
never seemed to me that it was needed.
s
smw
Richard Harter wrote:
Perhaps "God" can; the God of the Old Testament sure can't--look at him
changing his mind, his mood, his expectations. He is a psychological
being (hence interesting), whereas Plato's monotheos is not, and hence
uninteresting (which is as Plato wants it, afaics). Unless you want to
argue that he is like Freud's unconscious, i.e. a realm where no
negation takes place. That would be fine, as well. Only he wouldn't be
God anymore.
>As an analogy consider catalysts. Chemical catalysts do change; more
>precisely they change during the course of a reaction but end up in their
>original state. However mechanical catalysts need not change; they may
>merely provide a convenient place for some event to occur.
>
You're arguing on the basis of a specious distinction between a thing
and its environment.
>Similarly the
>A&E God can effect change without being changed. Moreover there isn't any
>real difficulty in imagining it as having a will.
>
You mean, you have no difficulty; which can point to an excess or a
dearth of imagination on your part.
>The A&E God can appear to "do stuff" from the perspective of the inhabitants
>of the here and now but that doing of stuff does not necessarily meant that
>the A&E God is changing during the process.
>
You're hedging -- does he appear do do stuff or does he do stuff? And,
yes, action implies time, and time implies change. A god who acts always
divides into a god before and a god after the act. Change enough.
>The Jewish God is reported as though it were a person that has moods and
>changes and very much is not an A&E God. One might think the same of the Christian God; however the Church did not have difficulty in marrying Plato and Jehovah.
>
On the contrary; that difficulty is the intellectual history of the West.
s
>
Lewis Mammel
smw wrote:
> Barbara Herrnstein-Smith has a fine and detailed refutation, but it
> never seemed to me that it was needed.
Where is this? Is it in Belief_and_Resistance ? I think I remember this
being mentioned in r.a.b years ago, but I've never seen it.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Jac.m.a.m.Oppers
A window acts as an obstacle to the *second* law's immediate
execution...
Jac.
James Whitehead
So it exempts itself - and any thing that isn't a particle? (Waves?) Or
can it be considered as part of a larger system of organisation called
"science". So i think maybe we need to look more carefully at terms like
"particle" and "very many" . I would like to know what tips the balance
from many - to very many when the law cuts in.
>
>Interestingly, Reif sets forth his topic in terms of discourse:
>
>"... we are ready to turn our attention to the main subject of this
>book, the discussion of systems consisting of very many particles."
>
where has this authority come from? And what is the book - have i missed
something in this thread- has it arrived in the po-mo universe half
formed (i could have said baked)
>A curious involution, as one might have thought that the subject
>of the book would be properties of, or interaction of, such systems,
>but he said it!
>
>> ... and so also the
>> post-modernists who can step out of 12 story windows and float gently
>> to the ground.
>
>Well, this is a contentious choice of an example, and I'm not sure
>why you made it.
Because someone else brought in the theory of gravitation.
>Just by way of renewing the challenge perhaps?
>But since you mention it, I'll restate my own point of view that
>this challenge, and especially the self-satisfaction implcit in
>making it, is blockheaded. One might just as easily attribute the
>certainty of falling to the ever-vigilant and jealous demons of the
>air as to an abstract Law of the Universe ... enforced by whom BTW?
>... and by what means?
>
>
Are you specifically calling be a block head? It would be nice to
establish our starting point. For instance such a head lacking very many
particles is of course not subject to the second law. However the theory
of gravitation was not me - but its common that its thrown around to
refute post-modernism - relativism and perhaps any non deterministic
thought in general. I cant help thinking its no more that the noticing
of a train passing by each Thursday at 12 o'clock, which if stepped in
front of would probably be fatal. But the certainty of harm in standing
on the line is not assured by the careful note taking of the local train
spotters. We have to imagine a change in the time table, a strike, a
mechanical failure or that the engine driver sees you on the line and
applies the breaks. We could even imagine a scenario where the driver is
late having quarrelled with his wife. Of course the laws of gravity are
not discovered thus - by careful observation. And haven't they in some
period of the early universe reversed themselves. Let me be specific,
using the laws of gravity to slap down a poet is annoying. Annoying
because its used by pseudo-scientists who as far as i can see do not do
creative science. Of course i remain to be pointed to the creative acts
of Sokal and his followers. My challenge is then to the non blockheads -
is to "do something". And not rubbish others on the basis of a
misunderstanding of what the laws of science are.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
Oppers <J...@Oppers.nl> writes
So might a french widow - if one was in the room
(apologies to ducamp)
--
James Whitehead
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
I only heard it in its lecture version -- moggin might know.
s
Kater Moggin
> Lewis Mammel wrote:
>>smw wrote:
"The Skeptic's Turn," chapter 6 of _Belief and Resistance_.
-- Moggin
to e-mail, remove the thorn
Lewis Mammel
James Whitehead wrote:
>
> In article <3CD40F0E...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
> >
> >The laws of thermodynamics apply, in Reif's statement, to "systems
> >consisting of very many particles" , so there is no need to start looking
> >for exempted categories. The realm of discourse has been duly limited
> >from the outset.
>
> So it exempts itself - and any thing that isn't a particle? (Waves?) Or
> can it be considered as part of a larger system of organisation called
> "science".
It does not exempt itself. It states what it states, and cites no
exemptions.
Show me how to define the temperature, internal energy, and entropy
of the second law of thermodynamics, then we can discuss it's
reflexive applicability.
> So i think maybe we need to look more carefully at terms like
> "particle" and "very many" .
> I would like to know what tips the balance
> from many - to very many when the law cuts in.
Science has no patience with such conundrums.
... Perhaps you say, "That's a terrible thing - I learned in
science we have to define EVERYTHING precisely." We cannot
define ANYTHING precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that
paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit
opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't
know what you're talking about!" The second one says, "What
do you mean by KNOW? What do you mean by TALKING? What
do you mean by YOU?," and so on.
- The Feynman Lectures
>
> >
> >Interestingly, Reif sets forth his topic in terms of discourse:
> >
> >"... we are ready to turn our attention to the main subject of this
> >book, the discussion of systems consisting of very many particles."
> >
> where has this authority come from? And what is the book - have i missed
> something in this thread- has it arrived in the po-mo universe half
> formed (i could have said baked)
That's Frederick Reif, author of a standard text - Fundamentals
of Statistical and Thermal Physics (1965). The book itself is
commonly known as "Reif" in the usual manner.
>
> >A curious involution, as one might have thought that the subject
> >of the book would be properties of, or interaction of, such systems,
> >but he said it!
> >
> >> ... and so also the
> >> post-modernists who can step out of 12 story windows and float gently
> >> to the ground.
> >
> >Well, this is a contentious choice of an example, and I'm not sure
> >why you made it.
>
> Because someone else brought in the theory of gravitation.
Well, there's a hook, but not much of a reason.
>
> >Just by way of renewing the challenge perhaps?
> >But since you mention it, I'll restate my own point of view that
> >this challenge, and especially the self-satisfaction implcit in
> >making it, is blockheaded. One might just as easily attribute the
> >certainty of falling to the ever-vigilant and jealous demons of the
> >air as to an abstract Law of the Universe ... enforced by whom BTW?
> >... and by what means?
> >
> >
> Are you specifically calling be a block head?
No.
> It would be nice to
> establish our starting point. For instance such a head lacking very many
> particles is of course not subject to the second law. However the theory
> of gravitation was not me - but its common that its thrown around to
> refute post-modernism - relativism and perhaps any non deterministic
> thought in general. I cant help thinking its no more that the noticing
> of a train passing by each Thursday at 12 o'clock, which if stepped in
> front of would probably be fatal.
It's a lot more than that, as an understanding of the danger of
falling is implicit in animal behavior, and had been specifically
recognized in human thought without reference to a law of gravity,
much less a Universal Law of Gravitation. The pomo's point of
contention concerns this last named Law, and the retort, "jump out
a window if you don't believe in it" misses the point spectacularly.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
James Whitehead
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> In article <3CD40F0E...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
>> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>> >
>> >The laws of thermodynamics apply, in Reif's statement, to "systems
>> >consisting of very many particles" , so there is no need to start looking
>> >for exempted categories. The realm of discourse has been duly limited
>> >from the outset.
>>
>> So it exempts itself - and any thing that isn't a particle? (Waves?) Or
>> can it be considered as part of a larger system of organisation called
>> "science".
>
>It does not exempt itself. It states what it states, and cites no
>exemptions.
>
If a film in the UK is advertised as 18, anyone younger is not able to
see it in the cinema. Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
>Show me how to define the temperature, internal energy, and entropy
>of the second law of thermodynamics, then we can discuss it's
>reflexive applicability.
So theories, and culture are exempted having nothing to do with
temperature etc. Well not in the way you mean, obviously global warming
will effect culture... but that's not part of the second law?
>
>> So i think maybe we need to look more carefully at terms like
>> "particle" and "very many" .
>
>> I would like to know what tips the balance
>> from many - to very many when the law cuts in.
>
>Science has no patience with such conundrums.
>
> ... Perhaps you say, "That's a terrible thing - I learned in
> science we have to define EVERYTHING precisely." We cannot
> define ANYTHING precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that
> paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit
> opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't
> know what you're talking about!" The second one says, "What
> do you mean by KNOW? What do you mean by TALKING? What
> do you mean by YOU?," and so on.
>
> - The Feynman Lectures
Pity science and pity Feynman, and his wild miss-representation of
philosophy. This is what is at times both annoying and amusing about the
naivety and the arrogance of science.
>>
>> >
>> >Interestingly, Reif sets forth his topic in terms of discourse:
>> >
>> >"... we are ready to turn our attention to the main subject of this
>> >book, the discussion of systems consisting of very many particles."
>> >
>> where has this authority come from? And what is the book - have i missed
>> something in this thread- has it arrived in the po-mo universe half
>> formed (i could have said baked)
>
>That's Frederick Reif, author of a standard text - Fundamentals
>of Statistical and Thermal Physics (1965). The book itself is
>commonly known as "Reif" in the usual manner.
OK - but this is alt.postmodern and to some extent rec.arts.books - why
are you expecting a discussion of this work within the context of
"science". Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
applying to itself and i kind of liked it. Because the theory seems to
state that systems run downwards ... etc. Why doesn't it apply to
itself? Now i think you are saying that its not as general as that. If
so we can forget about it re- these news-groups. (and all the other
science that's thrown around as Gods truth) You see Feynman might have
been whiz at physics but that doesn't give him any authority in saying
what philosophy is, or if it does then we can debate just what this is.
If its a case of you and he just throwing rocks - like sokal - then it's
interesting to see why you are so bothered to do this.
>>
>> >A curious involution, as one might have thought that the subject
>> >of the book would be properties of, or interaction of, such systems,
>> >but he said it!
>> >
>> >> ... and so also the
>> >> post-modernists who can step out of 12 story windows and float gently
>> >> to the ground.
>> >
>> >Well, this is a contentious choice of an example, and I'm not sure
>> >why you made it.
>>
>> Because someone else brought in the theory of gravitation.
>
>Well, there's a hook, but not much of a reason.
>>
>> >Just by way of renewing the challenge perhaps?
>> >But since you mention it, I'll restate my own point of view that
>> >this challenge, and especially the self-satisfaction implcit in
>> >making it, is blockheaded. One might just as easily attribute the
>> >certainty of falling to the ever-vigilant and jealous demons of the
>> >air as to an abstract Law of the Universe ... enforced by whom BTW?
>> >... and by what means?
>> >
>> >
>> Are you specifically calling be a block head?
>
>No.
that's nice to know-
>
>> It would be nice to
>> establish our starting point. For instance such a head lacking very many
>> particles is of course not subject to the second law. However the theory
>> of gravitation was not me - but its common that its thrown around to
>> refute post-modernism - relativism and perhaps any non deterministic
>> thought in general. I cant help thinking its no more that the noticing
>> of a train passing by each Thursday at 12 o'clock, which if stepped in
>> front of would probably be fatal.
>
>It's a lot more than that, as an understanding of the danger of
>falling is implicit in animal behavior, and had been specifically
>recognized in human thought without reference to a law of gravity,
>much less a Universal Law of Gravitation. The pomo's point of
>contention concerns this last named Law, and the retort, "jump out
>a window if you don't believe in it" misses the point spectacularly.
>
Well so have I. Maybe you could explain just what the point is?
--
James Whitehead
Richard Harter
You've aroused my curiosity - do you read posts through before you respond
to them or do you just toss these comments off as you are reading? The
reason why I ask is that I mention said God of the Old Testament a handful
of sentences [picture the text printed on paper, the paper cut into slips
with each slip containing a sentence, and you having a handful of such
slips] later, making much the same remark about Him as yourself, albeit
not so eloquently as yours.
Be that as it may I am intrigued by your notion of God being like Freud's
unconscious. Why do you characterize the unconscious as being a realm where
no negation takes place? What might you mean by your analogy?
I wouldn't worry too much about God not being God anymore. God never really
was God, don't you know.
>
> >As an analogy consider catalysts. Chemical catalysts do change; more
> >precisely they change during the course of a reaction but end up in their
> >original state. However mechanical catalysts need not change; they may
> >merely provide a convenient place for some event to occur.
> >
> You're arguing on the basis of a specious distinction between a thing
> and its environment.
Well, no, I'm not. Could you please be less superficial.
>
> >Similarly the
> >A&E God can effect change without being changed. Moreover there isn't any
> >real difficulty in imagining it as having a will.
> >
> You mean, you have no difficulty; which can point to an excess or a
> dearth of imagination on your part.
Merely a becoming modesty on my part, love. If I can imagine it, it can't
really be all that hard to imagine, now, can it? I will grant that a
being not in time will not have a will in the same way as a being in time
but that was always obvious. If you like, meditate on that magic mystic
phrase "as though" until attain satori or indigestion, whichever comes
first.
>
> >The A&E God can appear to "do stuff" from the perspective of the inhabitants
> >of the here and now but that doing of stuff does not necessarily meant that
> >the A&E God is changing during the process.
> >
> You're hedging -- does he appear do do stuff or does he do stuff? And,
> yes, action implies time, and time implies change. A god who acts always
> divides into a god before and a god after the act. Change enough.
No, I am not hedging - you are defining away the issue by insisting, in
effect, that a god not in time never-the-less is in time.
We might look at it as follows: By hypothesis there is an A&E god, i.e., a
being which is invariant through out all time. By hypothesis it is
perceptible to the denizens of time and space. Since it is invariant
it cannot be acted upon - no change in it can be effected. Since it is
perceptible there is interaction between it and the space-time universe.
This is a very peculiar interaction though because one party, the A&E god,
is unchanged during the interaction. It can be a pure source of action,
i.e., in consequence of its presence some invariant action continually
and eternally occurs (if it is a source it must be an invariant source.)
Likewise it can be a perfect reflector. (At the physical level this
violates most of the conservation laws of physics - too bad for physics).
The important thing is that the A&E god does not act even though it is
a source of action. The denizens of here and now, however, perceive it
as acting because they perceive it as a source of action.
>
> >The Jewish God is reported as though it were a person that has moods and
> >changes and very much is not an A&E God. One might think the same of the Christian God; however the Church did not have difficulty in marrying Plato and Jehovah.
>
> >
> On the contrary; that difficulty is the intellectual history of the West.
Did I say it was a happy marriage?
smw
Richard Harter wrote:
>
> smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message
> > Perhaps "God" can; the God of the Old Testament sure can't--look at him
> > changing his mind, his mood, his expectations. He is a psychological
> > being (hence interesting), whereas Plato's monotheos is not, and hence
> > uninteresting (which is as Plato wants it, afaics). Unless you want to
> > argue that he is like Freud's unconscious, i.e. a realm where no
> > negation takes place. That would be fine, as well. Only he wouldn't be
> > God anymore.
>
> You've aroused my curiosity - do you read posts through before you respond
> to them or do you just toss these comments off as you are reading? The
> reason why I ask is that I mention said God of the Old Testament a handful
> of sentences [picture the text printed on paper, the paper cut into slips
> with each slip containing a sentence, and you having a handful of such
> slips] later, making much the same remark about Him as yourself, albeit
> not so eloquently as yours.
The context was the Christian God, or one of the many. The NT one is
worse, so to speak -- he becomes flesh, has a biography, dies, etc. So
where in Christian theology--which would have to ground itself in the
Bible _somehow_, no?--would you find a God that doesn't change and would
still be the biblical God?
> Be that as it may I am intrigued by your notion of God being like Freud's
> unconscious. Why do you characterize the unconscious as being a realm where
> no negation takes place? What might you mean by your analogy?
The idea that the unconscious is a realm w/o negation is straight out of
Freud ("On Negation," one of the finest pieces he's ever written).
Negation is linked to time; there's no time in the unconscious, either.
Hence the idea of contradiction (or non-contradiction) is meaningless
there; how much closer can you come to the divine?
...
>
> >
> > >As an analogy consider catalysts. Chemical catalysts do change; more
> > >precisely they change during the course of a reaction but end up in their
> > >original state. However mechanical catalysts need not change; they may
> > >merely provide a convenient place for some event to occur.
> > >
> > You're arguing on the basis of a specious distinction between a thing
> > and its environment.
>
> Well, no, I'm not. Could you please be less superficial.
ObEssay: "Who Thinks Abstractly?"
ObBook: "The Psychotheology of Everyday Life"
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 6th of May, 2002
Silke:
So where in Christian theology--which would have
to ground itself in the Bible _somehow_, no?--would
you find a God that doesn't change and would
still be the biblical God?
In Augustine's _De Trinitate_, for one example
among many.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
> Monday, the 6th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> So where in Christian theology--which would have
> to ground itself in the Bible _somehow_, no?--would
> you find a God that doesn't change and would
> still be the biblical God?
>
>In Augustine's _De Trinitate_, for one example
>among many.
>
If he loses his biography, he's not the Biblical God anymore. Besides,
while I agree, of course, that such is Augustine's goal, I don't think
he succeeds. Or could have.
s
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 6th of May, 2002
Silke:
So where in Christian theology--which would have
to ground itself in the Bible _somehow_, no?--would
you find a God that doesn't change and would
still be the biblical God?
I said:
In Augustine's _De Trinitate_, for one example
among many.
Silke:
If he loses his biography, he's not the Biblical
God anymore.
Arrogance typical of you. Any "reading" which
does not happen to earn the Silke Stamp of
Approval is simply wrong. Even were it by a Doctor
of the Church---a Saint, a seminal maker of Christian
orthodoxy as we have had it for centuries, and one of
two persons to take Paul most seriously in all of Christian
history (the other being Calvin). The absolute incorporeal
immutability of God, the non-predication of
*anything* of God's substance, is of course the central
tenet in Augustine's theology, and it becomes the
centerpoint of his solution to the problem
of evil. But, no, you declare an unchangeable God
to be unbiblical, and that's all she wrote.
I mean, not that I finally buy Augustine myself,
but at least I understand that this is because I do
not believe what it is that Augustine believes, and
that this could well be *my* failing. It does seem to me
that Augustine's solution is, in point of fact, the *only*
solution to the monotheistic problem of evil going.
Augustine argues with a closeness to the biblical
text that is simply beyond your wildest dreams of
reading a text, girl. He is committed absolutely to
the veracity of scripture, and, so, the changeableness
of God (God as a literary character) that you wish to
point to, he simply reads in a different way than you
do, and, as far as he is concerned, the "biography" of
God that you have claimed isn't biography at all.
Silke:
Besides, while I agree, of course,
that such is Augustine's goal, I don't think
he succeeds. Or could have.
Succeed at what? Reading scripture in circles
around you, yeah, he probably does succeed at that.
Convincing you? Or me? No, he does not succeed. But,
it would be a mistake to think he is trying to convince
you or me. He is talking from inside his faith, trying
to communicate something that is essentially incommunicable
to those who do not believe what he believes, and which
may be only just communicable to those who share his
faith. With that environmental given acknowledged, I rather
think he does a formidable job.
In any event, the fact remains that the immutability
of God is *central* to Christian theology insofar
as Augustine's writings are right smack dab in the center of
the Christian theological rationalism. And this
immutability is perfectly biblical insofar as Augustine
does read the Bible _somehow_---and rather differently
than you do.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Monday, the 6th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> So where in Christian theology--which would have
> to ground itself in the Bible _somehow_, no?--would
> you find a God that doesn't change and would
> still be the biblical God?
>I said:
> In Augustine's _De Trinitate_, for one example
> among many.
>Silke:
> If he loses his biography, he's not the Biblical
> God anymore.
>
>Arrogance typical of you. Any "reading" which
>does not happen to earn the Silke Stamp of
>Approval is simply wrong.
>
Cut the crap for once, Morris. The Biblical God does things in time, and
changes in time.
>Even were it by a Doctor
>of the Church---a Saint, a seminal maker of Christian
>orthodoxy as we have had it for centuries, and one of
>two persons to take Paul most seriously in all of Christian
>history (the other being Calvin).
>
So what?
>The absolute incorporeal
>immutability of God,
>
incorporeality isn't the issue
>the non-predication of
>*anything* of God's substance, is of course the central
>tenet in Augustine's theology, and it becomes the
>centerpoint of his solution to the problem
>of evil. But, no, you declare an unchangeable God
>to be unbiblical, and that's all she wrote.
>
If you had the slightest indication that you even begin to understand
the stakes of the argument, you wouldn't be reduced to name calling and
hand waving.
>I mean, not that I finally buy Augustine myself,
>
ach
>but at least I understand that this is because I do
>not believe what it is that Augustine believes, and
>that this could well be *my* failing. It does seem to me
>that Augustine's solution is, in point of fact, the *only*
>solution to the monotheistic problem of evil going.
>
that doesn't change the fact that the Biblical God is within time, and
an immutable God would have to be without time. Which is something Plato
understands quite well.
>Augustine argues with a closeness to the biblical
>text that is simply beyond your wildest dreams of
>reading a text, girl.
>
Have you read Catherine Brown on Augustine addressing his God? A passage
in a beautiful essay, called "In the Middle."
The idea of you telling me what a close reading is is so deeply
wondrously comical it almost redeems the waste of time spent in
addressing you.
>He is committed absolutely to
>the veracity of scripture, and, so, the changeableness
>of God (God as a literary character) that you wish to
>point to,
>
Huh? I'm not in the least interested in God as "a literary character."
Does this kind of free-floating bullshit manifest your standard of
"reading"?
>he simply reads in a different way than you
>do, and, as far as he is concerned, the "biography" of
>God that you have claimed isn't biography at all.
>
Does the name "Jesus" ring a bell?
>Silke:
> Besides, while I agree, of course,
> that such is Augustine's goal, I don't think
> he succeeds. Or could have.
>
>Succeed at what?
>
At constructing a non-Biblical God that would be outside of time. His is
always both within and without.
>Reading scripture in circles
>around you, yeah, he probably does succeed at that.
>Convincing you? Or me? No, he does not succeed. But,
>it would be a mistake to think he is trying to convince
>you or me. He is talking from inside his faith, trying
>to communicate something that is essentially incommunicable
>to those who do not believe what he believes, and which
>may be only just communicable to those who share his
>faith. With that environmental given acknowledged, I rather
>think he does a formidable job.
>
You're really clueless, Morris. Unredeemably clueless.
>In any event, the fact remains that the immutability
>of God is *central* to Christian theology insofar
>as Augustine's writings are right smack dab in the center of
>the Christian theological rationalism. And this
>immutability is perfectly biblical insofar as Augustine
>does read the Bible _somehow_---and rather differently
>than you do.
>
But you have no idea how I read the Bible.
s
Lewis Mammel
James Whitehead wrote:
>
> In article <3CD5FD98...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
> >
> >
> >James Whitehead wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <3CD40F0E...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
> >> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
> >
> >> >
> >> >The laws of thermodynamics apply, in Reif's statement, to "systems
> >> >consisting of very many particles" , so there is no need to start looking
> >> >for exempted categories. The realm of discourse has been duly limited
> >> >from the outset.
> >>
> >> So it exempts itself - and any thing that isn't a particle? (Waves?) Or
> >> can it be considered as part of a larger system of organisation called
> >> "science".
> >
> >It does not exempt itself. It states what it states, and cites no
> >exemptions.
> >
>
> If a film in the UK is advertised as 18, anyone younger is not able to
> see it in the cinema.
I think you underestimate the resourcefulness of youth, but that is
beside the point. Call this "the law of 18", and say its range of
applicability is movies. Are soccer matches exempted, tea parties?
You could say so, I guess, but normally you would say that some movie
or other was exempted, being an exception to the understood rule. Even
s, the concept of restricted attendance is certainly meaningful for
other types of events. But is the law itself exempted? What would it even
mean to say that this law applies to itself?
> Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
> very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
> or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
The law can only be formulated in the given context. One says, "Consider
a physical system with temperature, internal energy and entropy defined
in a certain way" then one formulates the law.
> >Show me how to define the temperature, internal energy, and entropy
> >of the second law of thermodynamics, then we can discuss it's
> >reflexive applicability.
>
> So theories, and culture are exempted having nothing to do with
> temperature etc. Well not in the way you mean, obviously global warming
> will effect culture... but that's not part of the second law?
Of course not. One might say numbers, shapes and colors are "exempted"
as well, but this is fatuousness.
> >> So i think maybe we need to look more carefully at terms like
> >> "particle" and "very many" .
> >
> >> I would like to know what tips the balance
> >> from many - to very many when the law cuts in.
> >
> >Science has no patience with such conundrums.
> >
> > ... Perhaps you say, "That's a terrible thing - I learned in
> > science we have to define EVERYTHING precisely." We cannot
> > define ANYTHING precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that
> > paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit
> > opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't
> > know what you're talking about!" The second one says, "What
> > do you mean by KNOW? What do you mean by TALKING? What
> > do you mean by YOU?," and so on.
> >
> > - The Feynman Lectures
>
> Pity science and pity Feynman, and his wild miss-representation of
> philosophy. This is what is at times both annoying and amusing about the
> naivety and the arrogance of science.
I've said before that science is a dumb ox: ( from 1997 in this forum )
-------------
Think of it this way. Science is a great dumb ox that used
to be worshipped and pampered, but now finds itself laboring
in the field under torment by Woolgar, Feyerabend, Haraway,
Ross, and Latour, among other gadflies, until it bellows out,
"Help me! I'm being eaten alive by the great ogre Deconstruction!"
The lesser gadflies pipe up, "You stupid ox, there is no such
ogre. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!". Yet the ox is not entirely
mistaken.
--------------
> >> >Interestingly, Reif sets forth his topic in terms of discourse:
> >> >
> >> >"... we are ready to turn our attention to the main subject of this
> >> >book, the discussion of systems consisting of very many particles."
> >> >
> >> where has this authority come from? And what is the book - have i missed
> >> something in this thread- has it arrived in the po-mo universe half
> >> formed (i could have said baked)
> >
> >That's Frederick Reif, author of a standard text - Fundamentals
> >of Statistical and Thermal Physics (1965). The book itself is
> >commonly known as "Reif" in the usual manner.
>
> OK - but this is alt.postmodern and to some extent rec.arts.books - why
> are you expecting a discussion of this work within the context of
> "science".
I was just sharing the results of my researches.
> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
> Because the theory seems to
> state that systems run downwards ... etc.
Really? Does it seem that way to you? How so? What does the law
say that makes it seem this way? What would it mean for the law
itself to "run downwards" ?
> Why doesn't it apply to
> itself? Now i think you are saying that its not as general as that.
I'm saying, how could it apply to itself? The law says the entropy of an
isolated system cannot decrease. In what sense can the law be considered
an isolated system? How could its entropy be defined?
> If
> so we can forget about it re- these news-groups. (and all the other
> science that's thrown around as Gods truth) You see Feynman might have
> been whiz at physics but that doesn't give him any authority in saying
> what philosophy is, or if it does then we can debate just what this is.
> If its a case of you and he just throwing rocks - like sokal - then it's
> interesting to see why you are so bothered to do this.
They feel they are being pelted and are holding up a shield against
a shower of rocks. Sokal, of course, did lob one back. Cf. my
ox comment above.
> >> It would be nice to
> >> establish our starting point. For instance such a head lacking very many
> >> particles is of course not subject to the second law. However the theory
> >> of gravitation was not me - but its common that its thrown around to
> >> refute post-modernism - relativism and perhaps any non deterministic
> >> thought in general. I cant help thinking its no more that the noticing
> >> of a train passing by each Thursday at 12 o'clock, which if stepped in
> >> front of would probably be fatal.
> >
> >It's a lot more than that, as an understanding of the danger of
> >falling is implicit in animal behavior, and had been specifically
> >recognized in human thought without reference to a law of gravity,
> >much less a Universal Law of Gravitation. The pomo's point of
> >contention concerns this last named Law, and the retort, "jump out
> >a window if you don't believe in it" misses the point spectacularly.
> >
> Well so have I. Maybe you could explain just what the point is?
The pomo point, as I see it, is that science represents a particular
point of view, and its laws and results do not necessarily displace
other points of view from which these results do not seem binding.
Pomo sees science as chauvinistic in its claim of epistemological
hegemony.
I have a limited sympathy with this assertion, but the "jump out
the window, then" retort does not address it, for the reasons I
stated.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Don Tuite
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
>> very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
>> or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
>
>The law can only be formulated in the given context. One says, "Consider
>a physical system with temperature, internal energy and entropy defined
>in a certain way" then one formulates the law.
I think that if whoozis were smart, you wouldn't be having this
conversation. But if he were just a little brighter than he is, he
might insert the Shannon monkeywrench.
Don
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 6th of May, 2002
Silke:
So where in Christian theology--which would have
to ground itself in the Bible _somehow_, no?--would
you find a God that doesn't change and would
still be the biblical God?
I said:
In Augustine's _De Trinitate_, for one example
among many.
Silke:
If he loses his biography, he's not the Biblical
God anymore.
I said:
Arrogance typical of you. Any "reading" which
does not happen to earn the Silke Stamp of
Approval is simply wrong.
Silke:
Cut the crap for once, Morris. The Biblical God
does things in time, and changes in time.
"The reader of these reflections of mine on the
Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the
watch against sophistries of those who scorn the
starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be
deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love
of reason. Some of them try to transfer what they have
observed about bodily things to incorporeal and
spiritual things, which they would measure by the
standard of what they experience through the
senses of the body or learn by natural human intelligence,
lively application, and technical skill. There are
others whose concept of God, such as it is, ascribes
to him the nature and moods of the human spirit,
a mistake which ties their arguments about God to
distorted and misleading rules of interpretation.
Again, there is another type; people who indeed strive
to climb above the created universe, so ineluctably
subject to change, and raise their regard to the
unchanging substance of God. But so top-heavy are
they with the load of their mortality, that what
they do not know they wish to give the impression
of knowing, and what they wish to know they cannot;
and so they block their own road to genuine
understanding by asserting too categorically their
own presumptuous opinions, and then rather than change a
misconceived opinion they have defended, they prefer to leave
it uncorrected."
"Indeed this disease is common to all three types I
have mentioned---to those who conceive of God in
bodily terms, those who do so in terms of created
spirit such as soul, and those who think of him neither
as body nor as created spirit, but still have false
ideas about him, ideas which are all the further from
the truth in that they have no place either in the
world of body, or in that of derived and created
spirit, or in the Creator himself. Thus whoever thinks
that God is dazzling white, for example, or fiery red,
is mistaken, yet these are realities of the bodily
world. Or whoever thinks that God forgets things one
moment and remembers them the next, or anything like
that, is certainly quite wrong, and yet these are
realities of the mental world, But those who suppose
that God is of such power that he actually begets himself,
are if anything even more wrong, since not only is God
not like that, but neither is anything in the world of
body or spirit. There is absolutely no thing whatsoever
that brings itself into existence."
"It was therefore to purify the human spirit of such
falsehoods that holy scripture, adapting itself to babes,
did not shun any words, proper to any kind of thing
whatever, that might nourish our understanding and
enable it to rise up to the sublimities of divine things.
Thus it would use words taken from corporeal things to speak
of God with, as when it says _Shelter me under the shadow of
your wings_ (Ps 17:8); and from the sphere of created spirit
it has transposed many words to signify what was not in fact
like that, but had to be expressed like that; _I am a jealous
God_ (Ex 20:5) for example, and _I am sorry I made man_
(Gn 6:7). But from things that simply do not exist it has
never drawn any names to form into figures of speech or weave
into riddles. Hence those who are shut off from the truth by
the third kind of error fade away into meaningless even
more disastrously than the others, since they imagine
things about God that have no place either in him or in
anything he has made."
"The divine scriptures then are in the habit of making
something like children's toys out of things that occur
in creation, by which to entice our sickly gaze and get
us step by step to seek as best we can the things that
are above and forsake the things that are below. Things,
however, that are peculiar to God and do not occur anywhere
in creation are rarely mentioned by sacred scripture;
an example would be what was said to Moses; _I am who
I am_, and _He who is sent me to you_ (Ex 3:14). Since
in one way or another both body and spirit are said to be,
scripture would not surely have said that, unless it were
meant to be understood in some special way peculiar to God.
Then there is the apostle's remark, _who alone has immortality_
(1 Tim 6:16); since the soul too is called, and is, immortal in
some way, he would not have said _who alone has_, unless
it were the case that true immortality is unchangingness,
which nothing created can have as it is peculiar to the
creator. James too makes this point: _Every best bounty and
every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor moving
shadow_ (Jas 1:17), and so does David: _You will change them
and they shall be changed, but you are the selfsame_
(Ps 102:27)."
"So then it is difficult to contemplate and have
full knowledge of God's substance, which without
any change in itself makes things that change,
and without any passage of time in itself creates
things that exist in time. That is why it is necessary
for our minds to be purified before that inexpressible
reality can be inexressibly seen by them; and in order
to make us fit and capable of grasping it, we are led
along more endurable routes, nurtured on faith as long
as we have not yet been endowed with that necessary
purification."
Opening of Book I of _The Trinity_, St. Augustine
(translated by Edmund Hill, pp.65-66)
You will note, Silke, that this *is* a work of
theology, that it *opens* on the immutable nature
of God, and that Augustine betrays immediately
his program of biblical interpretation which
includes the *whole* biblical canon, and which reads
it through the lens of St. Paul, and which is committed
to resolving contradictions by using faith, abetted
by reason, to delineate what is to be literally and
what is to be read metaphorically about God's
nature.
I said:
Even were it by a Doctor
of the Church---a Saint, a seminal maker of Christian
orthodoxy as we have had it for centuries, and one of
two persons to take Paul most seriously in all of Christian
history (the other being Calvin).
Silke:
So what?
So, you made a statement about the biblical
God being changeable. Augustine's *biblical*
God isn't changeable. And it is plain that this
comes precisely from Augustine *reading* the Bible
differently from the way you do. And it is plain
that Augustine's *way* of reading scripture has
something bigtime to do with Augustine's Christian
faith. In God.
So, maybe he's a different reader of sacred
scripture than you are?
I said:
The absolute incorporeal
immutability of God,
Silke:
incorporeality isn't the issue
Yeah, it is. It was a huge issue with
Augustine---the breakthrough issue for
him from Manichaeism into the Neoplatonism
that would take him on to Catholic orthodoxy.
It's fairly obvious when you talk of the
biblical God being changeable that you
are reading him as a literary character---
a character that is like other literary
characters (a combination of Augustine's
errors number 1 and number 2 above).
Look, that may be a perfectly laudable way
to read the Bible. It may also be the way
*I* prefer to read it. But, *I* am not writing
theology. Augustine is. And the fact is his
God isn't unbiblical---he reads the Bible
differently.
I said:
the non-predication of
*anything* of God's substance, is of course the central
tenet in Augustine's theology, and it becomes the
centerpoint of his solution to the problem
of evil. But, no, you declare an unchangeable God
to be unbiblical, and that's all she wrote.
Silke:
If you had the slightest indication that you even
begin to understand the stakes of the argument, you
wouldn't be reduced to name calling and hand waving.
I see---so when you name-called in the very first bit
of yours I quoted above (essentially dismissing some millenium
and a half of Christian theology as "unbiblical"),
that was your admission of your incomprehension of the
stakes of the argument?
I said:
I mean, not that I finally buy Augustine myself,
Silke:
ach
You really irritate me, Silke. You get on this damned
high horse trying to paint me inappropriately as some
sort of Noel vis-a-vis anything I say regarding Nietzsche
(which I have read a great deal of) or remotely connected
to Derrida or de Man (which I have not), and you turn right
around and play the Noel yourself the second we get to
Augustine. And it boils down to the fact that you are so
steeped in ideology that you cannot imagine being open to
readig anything.
Look. Read what you wrote, that I responded to.
What you said is utterly asinine put up against
what I quoted for you from Augustine. _The Trinity_
is an acknowledged masterpiece of Christian theology.
Augustine argues from biblical text (Old Testament
and New) in nearly every paragraph of a 400-page
work. Unchangeableness is the central quality of
Augustine's God. It is very biblical. But, he *reads
the Bible* differently than you do. Get the possibility
of that through your thick skull, and your name-calling
and dismissal of 1500 years of Christian orthodoxy
might be seen for what it was, an ignorant dogmatism.
I said:
but at least I understand that this is because I do
not believe what it is that Augustine believes, and
that this could well be *my* failing. It does seem to me
that Augustine's solution is, in point of fact, the *only*
solution to the monotheistic problem of evil going.
Silke:
that doesn't change the fact that the Biblical God
is within time,
Except that Augustine disagrees with your reading on
this. Now, I understand that it were tres facionnable
to read the biblical God as a literary character,
and that may be what you are doing. But, that *doesn't
make your reading the factual one*. It *isn't a fact*
that the biblical God is within time, since very
obviously Augustine's God both *is* the biblical
God and *is not* in time. *He reads it differently
than you do*, I'm afraid.
Silke:
and an immutable God would have to be without
time. Which is something Plato
understands quite well.
And it is something which, voila!, St. Augustine
understands quite well, too. *He merely reads the Bible
differently than you do*.
I said:
Augustine argues with a closeness to the biblical
text that is simply beyond your wildest dreams of
reading a text, girl.
Silke:
Have you read Catherine Brown on Augustine
addressing his God? A passage in a beautiful
essay, called "In the Middle."
The idea of you telling me what a close
reading is is so deeply wondrously comical
it almost redeems the waste of time spent in
addressing you.
Good, because there is no text in existence
that has been so *read* as the Bible, and I am
afraid that, having read Augustine as I have,
I do not see *your* repeated assertions that
the biblical God changes in time are in any
agreed sense, true. In fact, they would
seem to me to be true *only* were one refraining
from reading the Bible theologically altogether---i.e.,
reading biblical text as literature, and not as sacred
scripture. The minute one starts to imagine
that it might, in fact, really be *sacred* scripture,
the minute Augustine's reading starts making
sense.
I said:
He is committed absolutely to
the veracity of scripture, and, so, the changeableness
of God (God as a literary character) that you wish to
point to,
Silke:
Huh? I'm not in the least interested in God as
"a literary character." Does this kind of free-floating
bullshit manifest your standard of "reading"?
The issue is you said God changes in the Bible.
According to Augustine (who wrote a few works
of theology, recall), God doesn't in fact change.
Now, the question is for me, say, as
an impartial observer on the sidelines, which one of
you---Silke the lit crit or Augustine the theologian---
is right about what the Bible says or doesn't say
about God's nature. And the answer is: It seems to
me to depend entirely on how you read it---is it an
anthology of loosely connected religious, mythological,
and historical writings, or is it a unified whole divine
communication from God to Man? It seems to me that your
assertion that "the biblical God is changeable" can only
come from reading scripture in a certain way, and that
is a way which is at odds with the way orthodox theologians
have read it and still do read it.
I said:
he simply reads in a different way than you
do, and, as far as he is concerned, the "biography" of
God that you have claimed isn't biography at all.
Silke:
Does the name "Jesus" ring a bell?
No, I'm much too stupid and ignorant for that
to have crossed my mind. Augustine, too. I mean,
go and read the bits about God being unchangeable
above and then question whether Augustine has
simply forgotten all about Jesus, too.
Silke:
Besides, while I agree, of course,
that such is Augustine's goal, I don't think
he succeeds. Or could have.
I asked:
Succeed at what?
Silke:
At constructing a non-Biblical God that would be
outside of time. His is always both within and
without.
I'd say his is unchangeable being. He seems emphatic
on that point.
I said:
Reading scripture in circles
around you, yeah, he probably does succeed at that.
Convincing you? Or me? No, he does not succeed. But,
it would be a mistake to think he is trying to convince
you or me. He is talking from inside his faith, trying
to communicate something that is essentially incommunicable
to those who do not believe what he believes, and which
may be only just communicable to those who share his
faith. With that environmental given acknowledged, I rather
think he does a formidable job.
Silke:
You're really clueless, Morris. Unredeemably clueless.
Right. "So where in Christian theology--which would have
to ground itself in the Bible _somehow_, no?--would
you find a God that doesn't change and would still be
the biblical God?" Gosh, I don't know where you'd
find that, since I'm really convinced now that any
changeable God must be unbiblical. Silke said so.
I said:
In any event, the fact remains that the immutability
of God is *central* to Christian theology insofar
as Augustine's writings are right smack dab in the center of
the Christian theological rationalism. And this
immutability is perfectly biblical insofar as Augustine
does read the Bible _somehow_---and rather differently
than you do.
Silke:
But you have no idea how I read the Bible.
Yeah, I do. You read it in such a way as to be at
odds with St. Augustine over the biblical God's
changeability.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
James Whitehead
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> In article <3CD5FD98...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
>> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>> >
>> >
>> >James Whitehead wrote:
>> >>
>> >> In article <3CD40F0E...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
>> >> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>> >
>> >> >
>> >> >The laws of thermodynamics apply, in Reif's statement, to "systems
>> >> >consisting of very many particles" , so there is no need to start looking
>> >> >for exempted categories. The realm of discourse has been duly limited
>> >> >from the outset.
>> >>
>> >> So it exempts itself - and any thing that isn't a particle? (Waves?) Or
>> >> can it be considered as part of a larger system of organisation called
>> >> "science".
>> >
>> >It does not exempt itself. It states what it states, and cites no
>> >exemptions.
>> >
>>
>> If a film in the UK is advertised as 18, anyone younger is not able to
>> see it in the cinema.
>
>I think you underestimate the resourcefulness of youth, but that is
>beside the point.
It could account for certain quantum anomalies... esp in the early
universe..
> Call this "the law of 18", and say its range of
>applicability is movies. Are soccer matches exempted, tea parties?
>You could say so, I guess, but normally you would say that some movie
>or other was exempted, being an exception to the understood rule. Even
>s, the concept of restricted attendance is certainly meaningful for
>other types of events. But is the law itself exempted? What would it even
>mean to say that this law applies to itself?
My first point was that things exempted by a law need not be specific,
18 and older exempts 9,10,11 etc. year olds. As a soccer match cannot
attend a movie then its outside the scope of the rule. There may well be
other rules which don't allow animals into the cinema. So my question is
- which i don't think you've answered - what is the scope of the second
law, in that what is outside its scope. It applies to systems consisting
of many particles, are there anythings other?
Some laws may well apply to themselves. "Obey rules" for instance. In
fact the whole behaviour of out legislators and government is open to
scrutiny and suspect of being hypocritical.
In other words how general is the law. Does the 2nd - or the first for
that matter only apply to certain situations or is it universal. If it
just applies to some private and technical issue within science then its
interest is limited, and it may well be exempt from its own ideas. That
the universe could degenerate into a chaotic state where no such laws
could be - including anything holding this law ... is interesting.
>
>> Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
>> very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
>> or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
>
>The law can only be formulated in the given context. One says, "Consider
>a physical system with temperature, internal energy and entropy defined
>in a certain way" then one formulates the law.
Ok so it does not describe balls of string and hose pipes, or the state
of the kitchen, the history of the roman empire... i'd say consider a
system which does not have temperature, internal energy... can we have
such systems?
>
>> >Show me how to define the temperature, internal energy, and entropy
>> >of the second law of thermodynamics, then we can discuss it's
>> >reflexive applicability.
>>
>> So theories, and culture are exempted having nothing to do with
>> temperature etc. Well not in the way you mean, obviously global warming
>> will effect culture... but that's not part of the second law?
>
>Of course not. One might say numbers, shapes and colors are "exempted"
>as well, but this is fatuousness.
no so - as it shows you think that shapes and colours can exist
independent of physical systems. Why is messing around with a ball of
string different to thinking?
However i don't notice it as thus, this is as i have said alt.postmodern
so the Ox is being very aggressive in pushing its way in. I'm curious
as to why its here - has it ran out of grass in its own field? Take the
sokal affair, its like some biologist attacking the cubist paintings of
Picasso... outraged at the poor biology... but then slowly maybe they
realise the mistake? and shock horror that there is a kind of poetry of
form going on here- err - and one which sees someone not as a biological
system but as a friend - a lover.... ohhhhhh?
>
>> >> >Interestingly, Reif sets forth his topic in terms of discourse:
>> >> >
>> >> >"... we are ready to turn our attention to the main subject of this
>> >> >book, the discussion of systems consisting of very many particles."
>> >> >
>> >> where has this authority come from? And what is the book - have i missed
>> >> something in this thread- has it arrived in the po-mo universe half
>> >> formed (i could have said baked)
>> >
>> >That's Frederick Reif, author of a standard text - Fundamentals
>> >of Statistical and Thermal Physics (1965). The book itself is
>> >commonly known as "Reif" in the usual manner.
>>
>> OK - but this is alt.postmodern and to some extent rec.arts.books - why
>> are you expecting a discussion of this work within the context of
>> "science".
>
>I was just sharing the results of my researches.
But - with a group who you know will not necessarily see it so, you are
disturbing deliberately the gad flies. If i went to alt.physics.optics
and said "i think the disruption of the picture plain in early cubism
might well be to do with Cezanne and African art, and to an extent the
poetry of Mallarme, but also the optical illusions from being very close
to someone, like a lover in bed, and these are perhaps more significant
to early cubism than any comparison with atomic theory during the early
2oth C."
>
>> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
>> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
>
>Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
Not in alt.postmodern. And you are yet as far as i can see to say why
its stupid. How for instance does the ideas of Barrow and Tipler fit
with it in terms of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, surely such
ideas mitigate "stupid" into at least giving it a second thought.
>
>> Because the theory seems to
>> state that systems run downwards ... etc.
>
>Really? Does it seem that way to you? How so? What does the law
>say that makes it seem this way? What would it mean for the law
>itself to "run downwards" ?
To become nonsense - gibberish, false, silly, self-contradictory...
>
>> Why doesn't it apply to
>> itself? Now i think you are saying that its not as general as that.
>
>I'm saying, how could it apply to itself? The law says the entropy of an
>isolated system cannot decrease. In what sense can the law be considered
>an isolated system? How could its entropy be defined?
Doesn't it say the entropy of non isolated systems does?
Lets define entropy as information. (God this is doing my brain in -
more coffee!) Cant we then see the loss of information due to its being
mixed up (wrong term i know) and that organising data into information
has a cost- aren't we saying to keep this information we need to exert
housekeeping - if we are in a dynamic "living" system, and that
eventually this will exhaust us, despite our best efforts to keep the
kitchen tidy it will eventually wear me out - i will die and the chaos
will overtake the sink... In information terms - if the librarians keep
the students out the information will remain (a closed system) but once
in use the fate of the information in the library is doomed. Now in this
damnation is also those catalogues and rules of cataloguing the
library...
>
>> If
>> so we can forget about it re- these news-groups. (and all the other
>> science that's thrown around as Gods truth) You see Feynman might have
>> been whiz at physics but that doesn't give him any authority in saying
>> what philosophy is, or if it does then we can debate just what this is.
>> If its a case of you and he just throwing rocks - like sokal - then it's
>> interesting to see why you are so bothered to do this.
>
>They feel they are being pelted and are holding up a shield against
>a shower of rocks. Sokal, of course, did lob one back. Cf. my
>ox comment above.
Are you saying that Alt.physics is full or po-moers and arty types? I'll
maybe have a look. Come on where is the evidence... hold on... well
after a few minutes no crowd of po-mos on any of the science groups, one
guy rubbishing of grammatology, someone else saying there are no closed
systems in our universe... but maybe you could direct me to where this
pelting is going on. Sokal's just moaning because modern poems often
don't rhyme and a lack of seascapes in art galleries these days.
>
>> >> It would be nice to
>> >> establish our starting point. For instance such a head lacking very many
>> >> particles is of course not subject to the second law. However the theory
>> >> of gravitation was not me - but its common that its thrown around to
>> >> refute post-modernism - relativism and perhaps any non deterministic
>> >> thought in general. I cant help thinking its no more that the noticing
>> >> of a train passing by each Thursday at 12 o'clock, which if stepped in
>> >> front of would probably be fatal.
>> >
>> >It's a lot more than that, as an understanding of the danger of
>> >falling is implicit in animal behavior, and had been specifically
>> >recognized in human thought without reference to a law of gravity,
>> >much less a Universal Law of Gravitation. The pomo's point of
>> >contention concerns this last named Law, and the retort, "jump out
>> >a window if you don't believe in it" misses the point spectacularly.
>> >
>> Well so have I. Maybe you could explain just what the point is?
>
>The pomo point, as I see it, is that science represents a particular
>point of view, and its laws and results do not necessarily displace
>other points of view from which these results do not seem binding.
>Pomo sees science as chauvinistic in its claim of epistemological
>hegemony.
>
>I have a limited sympathy with this assertion, but the "jump out
>the window, then" retort does not address it, for the reasons I
>stated.
>
What do you think science is? I think you've made pomo into another
hegemony btw. Isn't the real problem with Science and the scientists
themselves, and *their* recognition of the above point.
--
James Whitehead
Kater Moggin
[Augustine]
> one of
> two persons to take Paul most seriously in all of Christian
> history (the other being Calvin).
Um, no. You've skipped over Marcion, who was very serious
about Paul two centuries before Auggie.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> there is no text in existence
> that has been so *read* as the Bible
There's no text which has been so thoroughly unread as the
Bible.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
There are plenty of books which have never been read by anyone other
than the author, I don't think the bible is not one of them. Do you mean
misread?
--
James Whitehead
smw
>
>
>I asked:
> Succeed at what?
>Silke:
> At constructing a non-Biblical God that would be
> outside of time. His is always both within and
> without.
>
>I'd say his is unchangeable being. He seems emphatic
>on that point.
>
Here is the issue. First, yes, Augustine is emphatic on the point. So,
he postulates that God is indeed x. Second, he says many things that are
incompatible with x. So he does not do what he sets out to do. That's a
common occurence in the finest of books. You seem to think I'm accusing
him of failure -- nothing could be further from my mind. Humans can
indeed only postulate outside-of-timeness. They cannot think it.
Augustine probably went as far as anyone can.
That said, I'm fairly amused by your argument that Augustine is
entitled to his opinion about the Bible. It seems to me the question of
whether God changes in the Bible can be addressed quite simply -- by
pointing to passages in the Bible where he changes. From alive to dead
to alive again, for instance.
ObBook: _The Critique of Judgment._
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 7th of May, 2002
Silke:
I'll keep this simple and to the point.
So will I.
I asked:
Succeed at what?
Silke:
At constructing a non-Biblical God that would be
outside of time. His is always both within and
without.
I said:
I'd say his is unchangeable being. He seems emphatic
on that point.
Silke:
Here is the issue. First, yes, Augustine is
emphatic on the point. So, he postulates that God
is indeed x. Second, he says many things that are
incompatible with x.
No, he does not. He *reads scripture* so as to understand it
as compatible with x.
Silke:
So he does not do what he sets out to do. That's a
common occurence in the finest of books.
Ya-da...
Silke:
You seem to think I'm accusing
him of failure --
No, I think you are *accusing* him of misreading
scripture. He isn't. He is reading it differently
than you are.
Look, this goes way, way back with me. Probably 1985
or 1986 I was a relative newlywed and was doing
the "family" thing of attending church with my wife,
because attending church on Sunday was a habit she
had grown up with. It was this fairly liberal
Presbyterian church in Pasadena. Anyway, one of the
things we did while we did (before Martha's decision
of apostasy) was attend Sunday school. One Sunday
school class in paricular I remember was on the
"Parables of Jesus", taught by the Reverend Cal
Schoenhoven. He was a Swiss national, I think,
in Pasadena to study and teach at Fuller Theological
Seminary (a rather "evangelical" and non-liberal
institution, I think). Anyway, as I was saying,
Rev. Doc. Schoenhoven taught this class on the
Parables, and on Day 1, he offered examples of
interpretations of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The examples included one by Augustine that was probably
the most alien reading---an allegorical reading of which
I forget the details. So, Schoenhoven dismissed it with
a wave of hand, and said basically that now, with new
scholarship, we know better.
That seemed an appalling arrogance to me then, and it
remains so now, when you so eagerly step in to Schoenhoven's
role. The fact is, we do not know that Augustine's way of
reading isn't better than the one that you are offering. Maybe
the biblical God doesn't change at all. Augustine certainly
has a number of important biblical passages which support
him in his contention. He cites them, and he shows you
already on page 1 or page 2 of _The Trinity_ how he is
going to read those biblical passages which seem to God's
changeableness, and *this includes the biography of Jesus*,
who insofar as he *is* in time is not God for Augustine.
Silke:
nothing could be further from my mind.
It is not that you accuse Augustine of failure
that arouses my indignation. It is that you insist
that the only way of reading the Bible must have it that
God changes in time, when clearly one of the most
influential and rationally coherent works of Christian
theology ever written has it just the opposite.
Silke:
Humans can indeed only postulate outside-of-timeness.
They cannot think it. Augustine probably went as far
as anyone can.
I haven't a clue what you mean by only being able
to postulate out-of-timeness but not being able to
think it. Seems to me that long before I read Augustine
I wrote and published refereed papers in quantum cosmology
in which I most certainly both postulated *and* thought
about out-of-timeness, namely the out-of-timeness that
occurs where a 3-space plus 1-time dimensional manifold
goes over to 4-spatial dimensions "inside" a turning point.
It's something I most certainly *can* picture and think
about. In fact, thinking about it is about all I can
do with it. I understand perfectly (mathematically,
and visually when I imagine a projection of it onto
a two-dimensional curved sheet in a flat 3-d embedding)
what Hawking means when he says that asking what came
before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of
the North Pole. So, Augustine, when he says that God is
outside time is being funkily modern, in a way that
I (and others) most certainly do know how to think about.
Silke:
That said, I'm fairly amused by your argument
that Augustine is entitled to his opinion about
the Bible.
I'm appalled, as I said, that you do not immediately
concede that he is. The dogmatism of your position
is incredible to me. The Christian "Bible", read
in a certain way (more or less, the way evangelical
fundies pretend to read it), is extremely self-contradictory,
as rather wickedly pointed out in the delightful 1859
_Self-Contradictions of the Bible_ by William Henry Burr.
*If* you are going to believe in the Bible as the Word
of God and a coherent whole, then you have a rational
problem in resolving those contradictions. In particular,
there are passages which on a surface level seem to say
God changes, and others which say he doesn't. Now, Augustine
faced the challenge of resolving these contradictions
head-on, with a coherent programme for *how* to read
scripture.
Silke:
It seems to me the question of whether God changes
in the Bible can be addressed quite simply -- by
pointing to passages in the Bible where he changes.
Well, you are absolutely and completely wrong about
that. I mean, in the first place, you've got a real
problem identifying Jesus with God. You've got to go
outside the synoptics, and into Paul, and Pauline
material, in order to do that (for that matter, even
the synoptics are post-Pauline). And then you've got a
dark wood of heresies to the right and left of you
as to in just what way is Jesus God. Is his fleshly
body God? Is the Son of God God? What about passages
where he calls us all sons of God? What does he mean
by Son of Man versus Son of God? What about Augustine's
key passage---"I am that I am", and others I quoted
for you which say God is *not* changeable. You have to
decide how to read them. Maybe you are ignoring them,
maybe you are reading them metaphorically and taking
the God-change passages as literal, I don't know.
All I do know is that Augustine is coherent about how
he reads it, and he does not read those "biblical
passages where God changes" as in fact change by God.
Silke:
From alive to dead
to alive again, for instance.
Which I think Augustine says somewhere in _The Trinity_
about how this story, or *manifestation* to humans,
is meant to point the human mind to the eternal
unchangeability and beingness of God. You know, even
fleshly death can't mar or corrupt the underlying spiritual
reality.
Look. I *am not* asking you to agree with Augustine
(hell, I don't). I am asking you to make room for him,
however. Compared to your reading of the Bible ("pointing
to passages in the Bible where he changes") he is radically
different, and he is radically coherent with that difference.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Lewis Mammel
James Whitehead wrote:
>
> In article <3CD73136...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
> In other words how general is the law. Does the 2nd - or the first for
> that matter only apply to certain situations or is it universal.
It applies only to certain situations, but these situations are very
important and general, so that it is universal in that sense. Maybe the
point is more that it makes narrow assertions about the behavior of
physical systems - assertions that are narrower than popularly believed.
> If it
> just applies to some private and technical issue within science then its
> interest is limited, and it may well be exempt from its own ideas.
Each of us is free to take an interest in thermodynamics, or not.
If you find it of limited interest, that's up to you. It's rather
silly in that case to act as though you know something about it though,
wouldn't you agree?
> That
> the universe could degenerate into a chaotic state where no such laws
> could be - including anything holding this law ... is interesting.
The universe IS in a chaotic state. That's why the law is of interest
in the first place. It's the atomic structure of matter, and the chaotic
motion of its atomic constituents that is the key to thermodynamics.
> >> Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
> >> very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
> >> or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
> >
> >The law can only be formulated in the given context. One says, "Consider
> >a physical system with temperature, internal energy and entropy defined
> >in a certain way" then one formulates the law.
>
> Ok so it does not describe balls of string and hose pipes,
Of course it does. These are macroscopic material systems. It doesn't
say much about the gross arrangments of these items, though. If you unravel
a ball of string into a heap of fibers its thermodynamic properties are
largely unaffected.
> or the state
> of the kitchen, the history of the roman empire... i'd say consider a
> system which does not have temperature, internal energy... can we have
> such systems?
The thing is that these thermodynamic properties are not always of
paramount interest. I'm not sure what you mean by "the state of the
kitchen", but I'm guessing that you're thinking of order vs. disorder.
From a thermodynamic point of view, if you take the flour canister and
fling it around the room, not much has changed. There is no increase
in entropy, as one might be led to believe.
> >> >Show me how to define the temperature, internal energy, and entropy
> >> >of the second law of thermodynamics, then we can discuss it's
> >> >reflexive applicability.
> >>
> >> So theories, and culture are exempted having nothing to do with
> >> temperature etc. Well not in the way you mean, obviously global warming
> >> will effect culture... but that's not part of the second law?
> >
> >Of course not. One might say numbers, shapes and colors are "exempted"
> >as well, but this is fatuousness.
>
> no so - as it shows you think that shapes and colours can exist
> independent of physical systems.
Not at all, they are just particular aspects or categories that don't
attach to thermodynamic properties.
> Why is messing around with a ball of
> string different to thinking?
No wonder you flunked out of school ! But a ball of string and a brain
have thermodynamic properties when considered as material systems. The
string has a temperature and a heat capacity etc., but the brain is the
site of some chemical transformations which can be analyzed thermodynamically,
so it's got that going for it, but the more subtle significance of what
transpires there is something that transcends thermodynamic analysis, IMHO.
> >> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
> >> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
> >
> >Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
>
> Not in alt.postmodern. And you are yet as far as i can see to say why
> its stupid. How for instance does the ideas of Barrow and Tipler fit
> with it in terms of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, surely such
> ideas mitigate "stupid" into at least giving it a second thought.
I would say they elevate "stupid" to a new level.
> >> Because the theory seems to
> >> state that systems run downwards ... etc.
> >
> >Really? Does it seem that way to you? How so? What does the law
> >say that makes it seem this way? What would it mean for the law
> >itself to "run downwards" ?
>
> To become nonsense - gibberish, false, silly, self-contradictory...
This would mean abandonment of the law, not a change in the law
itself.
>
> Lets define entropy as information.
But entropy is not defined as information. It's defined as the integral
of the heat transfer divided by the temperature, or in Boltzmann's
formulation, k times the log of the number of available states at
a certain total energy of the system. Boltzmann's formulation is what
provides the connection to the information concept, but it's really
a rather tenuous one.
> (God this is doing my brain in -
> more coffee!) Cant we then see the loss of information due to its being
> mixed up (wrong term i know) and that organising data into information
> has a cost- aren't we saying to keep this information we need to exert
> housekeeping - if we are in a dynamic "living" system, and that
> eventually this will exhaust us, despite our best efforts to keep the
> kitchen tidy it will eventually wear me out - i will die and the chaos
> will overtake the sink... In information terms - if the librarians keep
> the students out the information will remain (a closed system) but once
> in use the fate of the information in the library is doomed. Now in this
> damnation is also those catalogues and rules of cataloguing the
> library...
No, this doesn't work out. Living things are sites of constant entropy
production - "dissipative structures" in Prigogine's term - like meandering
rivers, or sunspots. In thermodynamic terms, the entropy involved in the
formation of these structures is miniscule compared to the entropy
change entailed by a slight elevation of temperature. If
>
> What do you think science is?
The study of Nature.
> I think you've made pomo into another
> hegemony btw.
It is! It characterizes the current cultural milieu.
> Isn't the real problem with Science and the scientists
> themselves, and *their* recognition of the above point.
Science is dead, you can stop beating it now.
"Fukuyama's bored rejection of a future dedicated to science
spoke volumes" - John Horgan
Lew Mammel, Jr.
James Whitehead
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> In article <3CD73136...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
>> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>>
>> In other words how general is the law. Does the 2nd - or the first for
>> that matter only apply to certain situations or is it universal.
>
>It applies only to certain situations, but these situations are very
>important and general, so that it is universal in that sense. Maybe the
>point is more that it makes narrow assertions about the behavior of
>physical systems - assertions that are narrower than popularly believed.
Only certain situations - why not to information systems? Of which it
is part?
>
>> If it
>> just applies to some private and technical issue within science then its
>> interest is limited, and it may well be exempt from its own ideas.
>
>Each of us is free to take an interest in thermodynamics, or not.
>If you find it of limited interest, that's up to you. It's rather
>silly in that case to act as though you know something about it though,
>wouldn't you agree?
Is this "silliness" general or directed? If i live in a world in which
this law plays a part i should wisely be interested in it. I don't know
also why you assume i'm acting as though i know something about it,
haven't i been asking questions? One takes a passing interest at lots of
things, its probably an evolutionary thing. I have a book on larger
British moths for instance. I've always found "science" interesting,
though it could well be that its relevance is less than the average
moth. How do we- or I decide. And once i do being fairly pacifist i
would neither throw rocks or squash the moth. The only action against
moths is the thing hung in the wardrobe to stop them eating our clothes.
What i have noticed however is seemingly unprovoked attacks on certain
authors, Derrida for instance. I guess in part its that science students
spend more time on the net than arts students and being bored wander
into alt.pomo to shoot at the buffalo from the train window so as to
speak. This i think doubly abuses technology and deprives the natives of
their livelihood. I don't blame science for this technology but wish the
teachers of science wouldn't have such cultural prejudices which reveal
themselves in the bigotry of their students. The Sokal affair is a
shameful example. There are others.. You say science is the study of
nature - what new things are learnt each day by all its practitioners i
wonder? Look post-modernism - Derrida is part of nature, skoal's rock
throwing is study?
>
>> That
>> the universe could degenerate into a chaotic state where no such laws
>> could be - including anything holding this law ... is interesting.
>
>The universe IS in a chaotic state. That's why the law is of interest
>in the first place. It's the atomic structure of matter, and the chaotic
>motion of its atomic constituents that is the key to thermodynamics.
Ok i'm ignorant of that interpretation, seems what i call a mess
scientists call order - i thought the law was about entropy. Now
checking my "Science Desk Reference" ... "Thermodynamics studies the
dynamics of heat.... the results of that work had far reaching
implications in other branches of science and even in philosophy.... 2.
Heat will always flow "downhill" .... in mathematical and physical
terms a system in which everything is at the same temperature is
considered "orderly" ...this principle applies to all kinds of energy"
Now why doesn't this law apply to ordering or entropy with regards to
information, knowledge etc. Surely entropy is at work when messages get
confused...? The very fact that that the system called Science should
run downhill.... is predicted by the "philosophical" implications of the
law. So rather than a physicist study physics as his entropy increases
he throws rocks in all general directions?
>
>> >> Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
>> >> very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
>> >> or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
>> >
>> >The law can only be formulated in the given context. One says, "Consider
>> >a physical system with temperature, internal energy and entropy defined
>> >in a certain way" then one formulates the law.
>>
>> Ok so it does not describe balls of string and hose pipes,
>
>Of course it does. These are macroscopic material systems. It doesn't
>say much about the gross arrangments of these items, though. If you unravel
>a ball of string into a heap of fibers its thermodynamic properties are
>largely unaffected.
>
>
>> or the state
>> of the kitchen, the history of the roman empire... i'd say consider a
>> system which does not have temperature, internal energy... can we have
>> such systems?
>
>The thing is that these thermodynamic properties are not always of
>paramount interest. I'm not sure what you mean by "the state of the
>kitchen", but I'm guessing that you're thinking of order vs. disorder.
>From a thermodynamic point of view, if you take the flour canister and
>fling it around the room, not much has changed. There is no increase
>in entropy, as one might be led to believe.
Only in the narrow "heat" concern of the theory, but not in its
"philosophical" implications?
>
>> >> >Show me how to define the temperature, internal energy, and entropy
>> >> >of the second law of thermodynamics, then we can discuss it's
>> >> >reflexive applicability.
>> >>
>> >> So theories, and culture are exempted having nothing to do with
>> >> temperature etc. Well not in the way you mean, obviously global warming
>> >> will effect culture... but that's not part of the second law?
>> >
>> >Of course not. One might say numbers, shapes and colors are "exempted"
>> >as well, but this is fatuousness.
>>
>> no so - as it shows you think that shapes and colours can exist
>> independent of physical systems.
>
>Not at all, they are just particular aspects or categories that don't
>attach to thermodynamic properties.
But only in *certain* thermodynamic states can they exist?
>
>> Why is messing around with a ball of
>> string different to thinking?
>
>No wonder you flunked out of school !
I didn't! My school record was exemplary. Its just that in the study of
modern art one is constantly told to ask questions... its how it/we
studied nature.
>But a ball of string and a brain
>have thermodynamic properties when considered as material systems. The
>string has a temperature and a heat capacity etc., but the brain is the
>site of some chemical transformations which can be analyzed thermodynamically,
>so it's got that going for it, but the more subtle significance of what
>transpires there is something that transcends thermodynamic analysis, IMHO.
Ahh! but lets not be so humble in transcending the second law. Why? How
So? we ask... what is it that goes on in the Brain that in principle is
so different as to transcend a physical law. This strikes me as the very
act of stepping out of a 12 floor window and not falling....
>
>
>> >> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
>> >> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
>> >
>> >Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
>>
>> Not in alt.postmodern. And you are yet as far as i can see to say why
>> its stupid. How for instance does the ideas of Barrow and Tipler fit
>> with it in terms of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, surely such
>> ideas mitigate "stupid" into at least giving it a second thought.
>
>I would say they elevate "stupid" to a new level.
I see - we are all then stupid here then... and a few physicists as
well...
>
>> >> Because the theory seems to
>> >> state that systems run downwards ... etc.
>> >
>> >Really? Does it seem that way to you? How so? What does the law
>> >say that makes it seem this way? What would it mean for the law
>> >itself to "run downwards" ?
>>
>> To become nonsense - gibberish, false, silly, self-contradictory...
>
>This would mean abandonment of the law, not a change in the law
>itself.
Why? Surely if we abandon the law prohibiting smoking cannabis we have
changed the law? Again SMW is he/she called Silke - don't know what name
to call them politely, maybe makes the point - or asks the question, are
laws created or discovered. You seem to be of the 19thC "discover"
opinion? In other words Laws 'can only exist in certain thermodynamic
states.'
>
>>
>> Lets define entropy as information.
>
>But entropy is not defined as information. It's defined as the integral
>of the heat transfer divided by the temperature, or in Boltzmann's
>formulation, k times the log of the number of available states at
>a certain total energy of the system. Boltzmann's formulation is what
>provides the connection to the information concept, but it's really
>a rather tenuous one.
Lets go with tenuous - it has more about it than "transcendental". What
is heat but not information regarding a system?
>
>> (God this is doing my brain in -
>> more coffee!) Cant we then see the loss of information due to its being
>> mixed up (wrong term i know) and that organising data into information
>> has a cost- aren't we saying to keep this information we need to exert
>> housekeeping - if we are in a dynamic "living" system, and that
>> eventually this will exhaust us, despite our best efforts to keep the
>> kitchen tidy it will eventually wear me out - i will die and the chaos
>> will overtake the sink... In information terms - if the librarians keep
>> the students out the information will remain (a closed system) but once
>> in use the fate of the information in the library is doomed. Now in this
>> damnation is also those catalogues and rules of cataloguing the
>> library...
>
>No, this doesn't work out. Living things are sites of constant entropy
>production - "dissipative structures" in Prigogine's term - like meandering
>rivers, or sunspots. In thermodynamic terms, the entropy involved in the
>formation of these structures is miniscule compared to the entropy
>change entailed by a slight elevation of temperature.
>If
>
I don't follow this, correcting my language, the kitchen will become
ordered in that everything will arrive at the same temperature? When i
can no longer keep the fridge cold and the stove hot.
>>
>> What do you think science is?
>
>The study of Nature.
But its more isn't it. We have this huge thing called mathematics for a
start.
>
>> I think you've made pomo into another
>> hegemony btw.
>
>It is! It characterizes the current cultural milieu.
Only in the self denying way i think. I don't think you can attack it -
as being stupid et al, when its a result...
>
>> Isn't the real problem with Science and the scientists
>> themselves, and *their* recognition of the above point.
>
>Science is dead, you can stop beating it now.
>
I'm not beating it. Sokal et al is! This dead carcass which was science
is post-modernity.
> "Fukuyama's bored rejection of a future dedicated to science
> spoke volumes" - John Horgan
>
--
James Whitehead
Kater Moggin
> It is not that you accuse Augustine of failure
> that arouses my indignation. It is that you insist
> that the only way of reading the Bible must have it that
> God changes in time, when clearly one of the most
> influential and rationally coherent works of Christian
> theology ever written has it just the opposite.
So if Augustine was half as influential, then you would be
half as indignant?
-- Moggin
smw
Lewis Mammel wrote:
> James Whitehead wrote:
> >
> > >> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
> > >> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
> > >
> > >Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate to your incapacity to read literature. More and more, you strike
me as the type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
s
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
I said:
It is not that you accuse Augustine of failure
that arouses my indignation. It is that you insist
that the only way of reading the Bible must have it that
God changes in time, when clearly one of the most
influential and rationally coherent works of Christian
theology ever written has it just the opposite.
Moggin:
So if Augustine was half as influential, then you would be
half as indignant?
Nah, but it is silly for you to poke at "influence" here.
Influence in this case means well-known, important inside the
sandbox of theology. It gives the lie to Silke's repeated
assertion that the biblical God changes, at least insofar
as this assertion were meant to be more than an advancement
of Silke's opinion/biblical interpretation.
I think "rationally coherent" is the more important
descriptor here. As I said, it is a formidable program of
reading scripture. It tosses just about everything you've
ever had to say about Job out the window. (Hell, everything
I've had to say about, too.) But, it does *not* do this in the
arbitrary and random way your Joe Average thumper does,
but with reason and with a program for reading the damn
thing in a certain way. That is frankly why I personally
find it interesting. I've read scripture and done so
always with the response that this God and this Jesus is
not God. Something there is in both of them which I
cannot believe in. Those I have encountered who have
argued against me on that have always seemed to me to have,
well, rather poor reading skills---they claim absolute
belief in the literal Bible, but ignore anything in it that is
inconvenient to their received interpretation. In Augustine,
however, we have an example of someone who is *not*
ignoring the difficult bits, but who is *interpreting*
them according to a rational program of resolving apparent
conflicts between different parts of the Bible as a whole.
I mean, I don't agree with him finally, because I haven't
his faith. I, for instance, consider the Bible to be
an anthology of many different writings, and certainly
not the Word of God or divinely inspired, so for me there
is nothing to need to make cohere rationally. But I can
certainly see that for a Christian, there is a need for
rational coherence, for reading non-litterally in such a
way as to resolve apparent contradictions in scripture.
So, if Augustine were half as rationally coherent---
if his program of theology and of interpreting scripture
were half as formidable---, then I would be half as
indignant about the pretense that it doesn't exist.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
> Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
>
>I said:
> It is not that you accuse Augustine of failure
> that arouses my indignation. It is that you insist
> that the only way of reading the Bible must have it that
> God changes in time, when clearly one of the most
> influential and rationally coherent works of Christian
> theology ever written has it just the opposite.
>Moggin:
> So if Augustine was half as influential, then you would be
> half as indignant?
>
>Nah, but it is silly for you to poke at "influence" here.
>Influence in this case means well-known, important inside the
>sandbox of theology. It gives the lie to Silke's repeated
>assertion that the biblical God changes, at least insofar
>as this assertion were meant to be more than an advancement
>of Silke's opinion/biblical interpretation.
>
Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural history way beyond
the Middle Ages gives the lie to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
s
Michael Zeleny
Are you following a plan of periodically evincing new kinds of ignorance?
--
cordially, -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
7576 Willow Glen Rd, Hollywood, CA 90046 323-876-8234 323-363-1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
smw
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>Lewis Mammel wrote:
>>
>>>James Whitehead wrote:
>>>
>
>>>>Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
>>>>applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
>>>>
>
>>>Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
>>>
>
>>Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate to your
>>incapacity to read literature. More and more, you strike me as the
>>type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
>>
>
>Are you following a plan of periodically evincing new kinds of ignorance?
>
Don't embarrass yourself any further, Zeleny. Unless, of course, it
gives you pleasure. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.
s
Michael Zeleny
>>I asked:
>> Succeed at what?
>>Silke:
>> At constructing a non-Biblical God that would be
>> outside of time. His is always both within and
>> without.
>>
>>I'd say his is unchangeable being. He seems emphatic
>>on that point.
>Here is the issue. First, yes, Augustine is emphatic on the point. So,
>he postulates that God is indeed x. Second, he says many things that are
>incompatible with x. So he does not do what he sets out to do. That's a
>common occurence in the finest of books. You seem to think I'm accusing
>him of failure -- nothing could be further from my mind. Humans can
>indeed only postulate outside-of-timeness. They cannot think it.
Hic pons asinorum est. "Ageometretos medeis eisito."
>Augustine probably went as far as anyone can.
ObBestseller: The Elements
Michael Zeleny
The milk of your kindness is overflowing. You needn't try so hard --
I already got a blowjob today. Expend your concern where it's lacking.
smw
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>
>>>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Lewis Mammel wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>James Whitehead wrote:
>>>>>
>
>>>>>>Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
>>>>>>applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
>>>>>>
>
>>>>>Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
>>>>>
>
>>>>Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate to your
>>>>incapacity to read literature. More and more, you strike me as the
>>>>type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
>>>>
>
>>>Are you following a plan of periodically evincing new kinds of ignorance?
>>>
>
>>Don't embarrass yourself any further, Zeleny. Unless, of course, it
>>gives you pleasure. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.
>>
>
>The milk of your kindness is overflowing. You needn't try so hard --
>I already got a blowjob today.
>
As the subject was your capacity of self-pleasuring, let me commend you
on your agility.
ObPuzzle: Why do dogs lick their balls?
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
Silke:
Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural
history way beyond the Middle Ages gives the lie
to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
Which is *exactly* what I mean by *your* arrogance.
Neither philosophy nor literary criticism nor "reading" exhibits
*progress* in the same sense that science does exhibit
progress. Hence, Aristotle's assertions in natural
history (only some some of them in fact---it is astounding
what he got right) have been superceded in a way
that Augustine's assertions in trinitarian theology
have not been and cannot ever be superceded.
What you do is not science, Silke, and it cannot
erase or supercede what has come before it in the
way that science can.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael Zeleny
Opinions differ. My subject is your incapacity to affect my pleasure.
I would be hard pressed to exaggerate my unconcern with your subject.
> ObPuzzle: Why do dogs lick their balls?
Actually, dogs lick their dicks. The lit critter lesson of the day is
to abstain from extrapolating experience gained through one's own pussy.
smw
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>
>>>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Lewis Mammel wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>James Whitehead wrote:
>>>>>>>
>
>>>>>>>>Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
>>>>>>>>applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
>>>>>>>>
>
>>>>>>>Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
>>>>>>>
>
>>>>>>Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate to your
>>>>>>incapacity to read literature. More and more, you strike me as the
>>>>>>type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
>>>>>>
>
>>>>>Are you following a plan of periodically evincing new kinds of ignorance?
>>>>>
>
>>>>Don't embarrass yourself any further, Zeleny. Unless, of course, it
>>>>gives you pleasure. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.
>>>>
>
>>>The milk of your kindness is overflowing. You needn't try so hard --
>>>I already got a blowjob today.
>>>
>
>>As the subject was your capacity of self-pleasuring, let me commend you
>>on your agility.
>>
>
>Opinions differ.
>
As they will; syntax, however, is unambivalent. Again, congrats.
s
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural
> history way beyond the Middle Ages gives the lie
> to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
>
>Which is *exactly* what I mean by *your* arrogance.
>Neither philosophy nor literary criticism nor "reading" exhibits
>*progress* in the same sense that science does exhibit
>progress.
>
I quite agree; I am, however, shocked by your jejune postmodernist
assumption that hence all readings are of equal precision and equal
faith to the original, provided they come with the stamp of authority.
Shocked, my dear.
s
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
Silke:
Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural
history way beyond the Middle Ages gives the lie
to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
I said:
Which is *exactly* what I mean by *your* arrogance.
Neither philosophy nor literary criticism nor "reading" exhibits
*progress* in the same sense that science does exhibit
progress.
Silke:
I quite agree; I am, however, shocked by your jejune
postmodernist assumption that hence all readings are of
equal precision and equal faith to the original, provided
they come with the stamp of authority. Shocked, my dear.
No dice. We have already covered that ground, in
my dismissal as imprecise and unequal and unworthy
of your typical fundie's way of reading scripture (even
though he has it with the stamp of authority). The thing
about Augustine's reading is *not* its authority. Its authority
only says that it is well-known and understood in the
"theology" sandbox, which says that the pretense of your
original implication that no such theology exists is so
much nonsense. The thing about Augustine's reading is
its *rational coherence*---its way of reading the Bible as
a whole, true communication from God to Man. This is
not the way *I* read the Bible at all. I read it as an anthology
of various kinds of literature by various kinds of authors.
But, I do not have Augustine's Christian faith, which is a key
difference.
Now, you must understand that there is a huge hole in
what you have said here. See, you have insisted more than
once about God's biography in the Bible---in particular,
you have insisted that Jesus was born, died, and rose
again, and that this Jesus character doing those things in
time is God. The trouble is, you don't get that out of the Bible
without reading the Bible in certain ways that let this part of
the Bible explain or interpret this other part. I mean,
Jesus never says he is God. He says elliptical things like
"I and the Father are one", but he never comes out and says
he is God. So, your whole thing about the biblical God having
a biography draws on a huge tradition and authority of
cross-reading and interpreting one part of the Bible in terms of
another part. You have either created this reading yourself, or
what is more likely, you are simply invoking a specific authority
and tradition. Fine. But, then, in contrast, Augustine's rational
coherence---his way of micro-interpreting scripture through the lens
of a fairly radical reading of St. Paul---starts looking pretty good,
when stacked up against what you seem to be doing.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
James Whitehead wrote:
Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
Lew:
Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
Silke:
Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate
to your incapacity to read literature.
Well, I'm with Lew. It was just stupid. I mean, you can't claim
"metaphor" and rescue it thereby. A metaphor, in order
not be stupid, has to have a consistent and apt translation
of signifier and metaphorically signified. This one just betrays
that the poet didn't understand the signifier in the first
place.
Silke:
More and more, you strike
me as the type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
This is a bizarre change of direction. I mean,
I doubt that there even is such a type. Now,
objecting to Gell-Mann's appropriation of Joyce's term might
be another matter...
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
We call that "a strong misreading." It's a term of praise.
s
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
>
>James Whitehead wrote:
> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
>Lew:
> Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
>Silke:
> Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate
> to your incapacity to read literature.
>
>Well, I'm with Lew. It was just stupid. I mean, you can't claim
>"metaphor" and rescue it thereby. A metaphor, in order
>not be stupid, has to have a consistent and apt translation
>of signifier and metaphorically signified. This one just betrays
>that the poet didn't understand the signifier in the first
>place.
>
Nonsense. Terms travel from science to non-science and back again. They
always gain, they always lose. Metaphor relates to its constituents both
by similarity and by difference. Otherwise, you're dealing with synonym.
>Silke:
> More and more, you strike
> me as the type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
>
>This is a bizarre change of direction. I mean,
>I doubt that there even is such a type. Now,
>objecting to Gell-Mann's appropriation of Joyce's term might
>be another matter...
>
Joyce's quark is an example for travel in the other direction. Recall
that metaphor means transport.
s
Don Tuite
>Michael S. Morris wrote:
. . .
>>Silke:
>> More and more, you strike
>> me as the type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
>>
>>This is a bizarre change of direction. I mean,
>>I doubt that there even is such a type. Now,
>>objecting to Gell-Mann's appropriation of Joyce's term might
>>be another matter...
>>
>Joyce's quark is an example for travel in the other direction. Recall
>that metaphor means transport.
Possible urban legend alert:
From James Gleick, _Genius_ (his Feynman bio):
". . .in 1963 Gell-Mann and, indpendently, a younger Caltech theorist,
George Zweig, proposed it [a three-member family of particles with
fractional charges] anyway. Zweig called his particles *aces*.
Gell-Mann won the linguistic battle once again: his choice, a croaking
nonsense word, was *quark*. (After the fact, he was able to tack on a
literary antecedent when he found the phrase "Three quarks for Muster
Mark" in _Finnegans Wake_, but the physicist's quark was pronounced
from the beginning to rhyme with 'cork.'" (p. 390)
Don
ObFictionByAnAstronomer: Chet Raymo, _The Dork of Cork_
Michael Zeleny
> Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural
> history way beyond the Middle Ages gives the lie
> to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
>
>Which is *exactly* what I mean by *your* arrogance.
>Neither philosophy
Witness to the contrary the supersedure of Aristotelian logic by
quantified propositional calculi discovered by Frege and Peirce.
> nor literary criticism nor "reading" exhibits
>*progress* in the same sense that science does exhibit
>progress. Hence, Aristotle's assertions in natural
>history (only some some of them in fact---it is astounding
>what he got right) have been superceded in a way
>that Augustine's assertions in trinitarian theology
>have not been and cannot ever be superceded.
>
>What you do is not science, Silke, and it cannot
>erase or supercede what has come before it in the
>way that science can.
>
> Mike Morris
> (msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael Zeleny
>>Opinions differ.
>As they will; syntax,
You misspelled "conceit".
> however, is unambivalent. Again, congrats.
ObLimey:
Wilson: I'm looking for a new kind of satisfaction.
smw
Don Tuite wrote:
>On Wed, 08 May 2002 14:26:22 -0400, smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>Michael S. Morris wrote:
>>
>. . .
>
>>>Silke:
>>> More and more, you strike
>>> me as the type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
>>>
>>>This is a bizarre change of direction. I mean,
>>>I doubt that there even is such a type. Now,
>>>objecting to Gell-Mann's appropriation of Joyce's term might
>>>be another matter...
>>>
>>Joyce's quark is an example for travel in the other direction. Recall
>>that metaphor means transport.
>>
>
>Possible urban legend alert:
>
spoiling a good story with facts is the hallmark of a loutish lout.
s
Don Tuite
Loutish lout reminds me of Zeleney's Popeye .sig
Don
Lewis Mammel
James Whitehead wrote:
>
> In article <3CD8957D...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
> >
> >
> >James Whitehead wrote:
> >> That
> >> the universe could degenerate into a chaotic state where no such laws
> >> could be - including anything holding this law ... is interesting.
> >
> >The universe IS in a chaotic state. That's why the law is of interest
> >in the first place. It's the atomic structure of matter, and the chaotic
> >motion of its atomic constituents that is the key to thermodynamics.
>
> Ok i'm ignorant of that interpretation,
Welcome to the nineteenth century.
> seems what i call a mess
> scientists call order - i thought the law was about entropy. Now
> checking my "Science Desk Reference" ... "Thermodynamics studies the
> dynamics of heat.
This is a misreading of the term. "Thermodynamics" derives from
"Thermo-dynamic engines" which is descriptive of the conversion
of heat into motive power. Compare "dynamoelectric machine"
( "dynamo" for short ) which converts motive power into electric
power. ( http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/paper.php?id=8 )
> ... the results of that work had far reaching
> implications in other branches of science and even in philosophy.... 2.
> Heat will always flow "downhill" .... in mathematical and physical
> terms a system in which everything is at the same temperature is
> considered "orderly"
This is backwards. Everything at the same temperature is maximum
disorder, as in complete mixing.
> ...this principle applies to all kinds of energy"
> Now why doesn't this law apply to ordering or entropy with regards to
> information, knowledge etc. Surely entropy is at work when messages get
> confused...?
It's certainly a tempting parallel, but randomization is a simpler concept,
and in fact part of the premise for the definition of entropy, which presumes
a dynamical system with many random degrees of freedom, and goes on from there.
The concept of entropy derives from the circumstances in which it obtains.
You have followed the tendency to reify it as some kind of agency.
> The very fact that that the system called Science should
> run downhill.... is predicted by the "philosophical" implications of the
> law. So rather than a physicist study physics as his entropy increases
> he throws rocks in all general directions?
How then does philosophy account for the presence of science on the
top of the hill in the first place? This is mythic metaphor, not
philosophy.
> >> >> Surly you say it applies to "systems consisting of
> >> >> very many particles" - it exempts things which are not so constructed -
> >> >> or are you saying it implies everything is so constructed?
> >> >
> >> >The law can only be formulated in the given context. One says, "Consider
> >> >a physical system with temperature, internal energy and entropy defined
> >> >in a certain way" then one formulates the law.
> >>
> >> Ok so it does not describe balls of string and hose pipes,
> >
> >Of course it does. These are macroscopic material systems. It doesn't
> >say much about the gross arrangments of these items, though. If you unravel
> >a ball of string into a heap of fibers its thermodynamic properties are
> >largely unaffected.
> >
> >
> >> or the state
> >> of the kitchen, the history of the roman empire... i'd say consider a
> >> system which does not have temperature, internal energy... can we have
> >> such systems?
> >
> >The thing is that these thermodynamic properties are not always of
> >paramount interest. I'm not sure what you mean by "the state of the
> >kitchen", but I'm guessing that you're thinking of order vs. disorder.
> >From a thermodynamic point of view, if you take the flour canister and
> >fling it around the room, not much has changed. There is no increase
> >in entropy, as one might be led to believe.
>
> Only in the narrow "heat" concern of the theory, but not in its
> "philosophical" implications?
You're idea of philosophy is mythic reification. It reminds me
of the popular notion of The Coriolis Force as sort of a genie,
"Ever Whirling Coriolis" I like to call it, who rules over toilets
and drains. This is one of those "cross-over" ideas that Silke speaks
of. It gained and it lost. It gained intrigue, but it lost all reason.
> >But a ball of string and a brain
> >have thermodynamic properties when considered as material systems. The
> >string has a temperature and a heat capacity etc., but the brain is the
> >site of some chemical transformations which can be analyzed thermodynamically,
> >so it's got that going for it, but the more subtle significance of what
> >transpires there is something that transcends thermodynamic analysis, IMHO.
>
> Ahh! but lets not be so humble in transcending the second law. Why? How
> So? we ask... what is it that goes on in the Brain that in principle is
> so different as to transcend a physical law.
That's the $64,000 question. N.B. transcend != contradict
> This strikes me as the very
> act of stepping out of a 12 floor window and not falling....
Yet, here we are.
> >> Lets define entropy as information.
> >
> >But entropy is not defined as information. It's defined as the integral
> >of the heat transfer divided by the temperature, or in Boltzmann's
> >formulation, k times the log of the number of available states at
> >a certain total energy of the system. Boltzmann's formulation is what
> >provides the connection to the information concept, but it's really
> >a rather tenuous one.
>
> Lets go with tenuous - it has more about it than "transcendental". What
> is heat but not information regarding a system?
It's the opposite of information. It's highly disordered motion - energy
at the bottom of a hill.
> >> (God this is doing my brain in -
> >> more coffee!) Cant we then see the loss of information due to its being
> >> mixed up (wrong term i know) and that organising data into information
> >> has a cost- aren't we saying to keep this information we need to exert
> >> housekeeping - if we are in a dynamic "living" system, and that
> >> eventually this will exhaust us, despite our best efforts to keep the
> >> kitchen tidy it will eventually wear me out - i will die and the chaos
> >> will overtake the sink... In information terms - if the librarians keep
> >> the students out the information will remain (a closed system) but once
> >> in use the fate of the information in the library is doomed. Now in this
> >> damnation is also those catalogues and rules of cataloguing the
> >> library...
> >
> >No, this doesn't work out. Living things are sites of constant entropy
> >production - "dissipative structures" in Prigogine's term - like meandering
> >rivers, or sunspots. In thermodynamic terms, the entropy involved in the
> >formation of these structures is miniscule compared to the entropy
> >change entailed by a slight elevation of temperature.
> >If
> >
>
> I don't follow this, correcting my language, the kitchen will become
> ordered in that everything will arrive at the same temperature? When i
> can no longer keep the fridge cold and the stove hot.
When a hot turkey is sitting on the counter, the kitchen is in an
ordered state in the sense that the kitchen is arranged with more
energetic motion in one spot - the turkey. As the turkey cools this
motion is randomized until it is shared, on average, among all the
constituent particles of the kitchen ( if you can't stand the heat,
get out of the adiabatic kitchen ... ) The entropy has increased by
an amount Q/T, Q ~ 50K * 10kg * 1000 cal/K/kg / 50 K or 10000 cal/K
Now, without a stove or refrigerator or other low-entropy energy
source, you can't make the turkey hot again.
Suppose you had a gas and air supply in your adiabatic kitchen. You could
arrange to contain the exhaust products, but all the heat output would
eventually diffuse throughout the kitchen, and by the time you used
up your fuel, the kitchen would be uniformly elevated in temperature
with no way to make anything in it hotter or colder.
This is true even if you have (say) a gas refrigerator. It can only
make the fridge colder by making the kitchen warmer, and when the gas
runs out the fridge warms up and there you are - the heat death
of the kitchen.
Of course, if you're in there with food water and air, the heat
death isn't complete until you have extracted all the usable
energy you can from these resources, cease to metabolize, and
come to thermal equilibrium.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Jeff Inman
> Silke:
> Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural
> history way beyond the Middle Ages gives the lie
> to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
>
> Which is *exactly* what I mean by *your* arrogance.
> Neither philosophy nor literary criticism nor "reading" exhibits
> *progress* in the same sense that science does exhibit
> progress. Hence, Aristotle's assertions in natural
> history (only some some of them in fact---it is astounding
> what he got right) have been superceded in a way
> that Augustine's assertions in trinitarian theology
> have not been and cannot ever be superceded.
You don't think dogma evolves and develops and grows
and learns and discovers and tests and reformulates?
Weren't many of the "heretical" positions so deemed
because of the problems that were discovered to arise
or to fail to be prevented by them? I agree the
principles that guide the search are different --
different values -- but it seems hasty to say that
theological assertions can't be superceded, or, for
that matter, that other kinds of supercession are solid.
So, for example, as to the unchanging character of the
deity, and maybe Augustine addresses this, but what
does he make of the apparent discoveries made in
e.g. Genesis? Doesn't the wrath there suggest
surprise or disappointment? And doesn't such an
emotion suggest something learned? And doesn't
something learned suggest a development? I mean,
if you're going to give humans autonomy (pretending
for a moment that that isn't a complicated and
ambiguous thing), don't you suddenly have the potential
for surprises? I presume a discussion about that could
at least potentially be counted as an "experiment",
don't you?
Jeff
Lewis Mammel
James Whitehead wrote:
>
> Is this "silliness" general or directed? If i live in a world in which
> this law plays a part i should wisely be interested in it. I don't know
> also why you assume i'm acting as though i know something about it,
> haven't i been asking questions? One takes a passing interest at lots of
> things, its probably an evolutionary thing. I have a book on larger
> British moths for instance. I've always found "science" interesting,
> though it could well be that its relevance is less than the average
> moth. How do we- or I decide. And once i do being fairly pacifist i
> would neither throw rocks or squash the moth. The only action against
> moths is the thing hung in the wardrobe to stop them eating our clothes.
> What i have noticed however is seemingly unprovoked attacks on certain
> authors, Derrida for instance. I guess in part its that science students
> spend more time on the net than arts students and being bored wander
> into alt.pomo to shoot at the buffalo from the train window so as to
> speak. This i think doubly abuses technology and deprives the natives of
> their livelihood. I don't blame science for this technology but wish the
> teachers of science wouldn't have such cultural prejudices which reveal
> themselves in the bigotry of their students. The Sokal affair is a
> shameful example. There are others.. You say science is the study of
> nature - what new things are learnt each day by all its practitioners i
> wonder? Look post-modernism - Derrida is part of nature, skoal's rock
> throwing is study?
Can you place this?
The very public counterattack by the scientific conservatives and
their publicists is by no means unexpected. What needs explanation
is why the scientific establishment, which for years ignored or
curtly dismissed critics such as Nietzsche and members of the
Frankfurt School as antediluvian cranks, has chosen this moment
to recognize that the challenge is worthy of reply.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Kater Moggin
>>> It is not that you accuse Augustine of failure
>>> that arouses my indignation. It is that you insist
>>> that the only way of reading the Bible must have it that
>>> God changes in time, when clearly one of the most
>>> influential and rationally coherent works of Christian
>>> theology ever written has it just the opposite.
Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
>> So if Augustine was half as influential, then you would be
>> half as indignant?
Mike:
> Nah, but it is silly for you to poke at "influence" here.
I've already jabbed at your notion that Augustine invented
interiority, and your idea that with Calvin, he was of "two
persons to take Paul most seriously in all of Christian history."
Augustine wasn't even the first Christian to discuss
interiority -- it's a concern in Matthew 5, as I pointed out to
you -- and he didn't come along until centuries after a
Christian named Marcion, who took Paul as seriously as could be.
Come to think of it, Barth's 500-plus pages on the Epistle
to the Romans is pretty serious, too.
> Influence in this case means well-known, important inside the
> sandbox of theology. It gives the lie to Silke's repeated
> assertion that the biblical God changes, at least insofar
> as this assertion were meant to be more than an advancement
> of Silke's opinion/biblical interpretation.
That fits with your references to Augustine as a capital-S
Saint, "a Doctor of the Church," and a fella with orthodox
jism. All of which plus two bits and a piece of the True Cross
will buy you a cup of coffee.
> I think "rationally coherent" is the more important
> descriptor here.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Me, I think that you're
giving an argument-from-authority.
> As I said, it is a formidable program of
> reading scripture. It tosses just about everything you've
> ever had to say about Job out the window. (Hell, everything
> I've had to say about, too.) But, it does *not* do this in the
> arbitrary and random way your Joe Average thumper does,
> but with reason and with a program for reading the damn
> thing in a certain way. That is frankly why I personally
> find it interesting. I've read scripture and done so
> always with the response that this God and this Jesus is
> not God. Something there is in both of them which I
> cannot believe in. Those I have encountered who have
> argued against me on that have always seemed to me to have,
> well, rather poor reading skills---they claim absolute
> belief in the literal Bible, but ignore anything in it that is
> inconvenient to their received interpretation. In Augustine,
> however, we have an example of someone who is *not*
> ignoring the difficult bits, but who is *interpreting*
> them according to a rational program of resolving apparent
> conflicts between different parts of the Bible as a whole.
My impression of thumpers is different. The ones I've run
across -- mostly on-line, if it matters -- don't simply
ignore the scriptures that dispute them. Oh, they do sometimes
-- it's only natural. But they think the entire Bible
supports their views, and like Augustine, they believe they can
press every verse into service. In a sense they're right.
Like him, they're always able to supply an interpretation which
makes the Bible fit their taste.
> I mean, I don't agree with him finally, because I haven't
> his faith. I, for instance, consider the Bible to be
> an anthology of many different writings, and certainly
> not the Word of God or divinely inspired, so for me there
> is nothing to need to make cohere rationally. But I can
> certainly see that for a Christian, there is a need for
> rational coherence, for reading non-litterally in such a
> way as to resolve apparent contradictions in scripture.
One of Augustine's sympathetic readers (Thomas Williams in
_The Cambridge Companion_) says that "he brings to his
exegesis the full measure of Christian belief." Very ambiguous
praise.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
[Genesis]
> Doesn't the wrath there suggest
> surprise or disappointment? And doesn't such an
> emotion suggest something learned? And doesn't
> something learned suggest a development?
I'm not sure which wrath you mean, but the one just before
the Flood suggests disappointment and then some. Here's
Genesis 6:6: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on
the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." You already
know his solution. "And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom
I have created from the face of the earth." Also all the
other living creatures. One of his better ideas, really -- too
bad he didn't follow through.
-- Moggin
to e-mail, remove the thorn
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 9th of May, 2002
Silke:
Indeed. Just as Aristotle's influence over natural
history way beyond the Middle Ages gives the lie
to Silke's assertion that bees have queens.
I said:
Which is *exactly* what I mean by *your* arrogance.
Neither philosophy nor literary criticism nor "reading" exhibits
*progress* in the same sense that science does exhibit
progress. Hence, Aristotle's assertions in natural
history (only some some of them in fact---it is astounding
what he got right) have been superceded in a way
that Augustine's assertions in trinitarian theology
have not been and cannot ever be superceded.
Jeff:
You don't think dogma evolves and develops and grows
and learns and discovers and tests and reformulates?
Of course it does. And of course there is a kind of
progress to it, just as there is a kind of progress
to dialectic. A reasonable objection to an original
argument displaces that argument, needs to be met in
any reformulation of that argument. Also, there are
"scientific" things we now know about the Bible that
were not known by Augustine.
But, Augustine's way of interpreting biblical
text---especially vis-a-vis his central thesis that
God is unchangeable being---is not something that
is in any way "displaced" or "superceded" by Silke's
theobiographical claim. It was a claim that was
transparently obvious to Augustine in his time.
It was in fact a belief that he once held himself,
before his own conversion to Catholicism, so it is
certainly not something that is *like* Aristotle's
king-bee thang.
Jeff:
Weren't many of the "heretical" positions so deemed
because of the problems that were discovered to arise
or to fail to be prevented by them? I agree the
principles that guide the search are different --
different values -- but it seems hasty to say that
theological assertions can't be superceded, or, for
that matter, that other kinds of supercession are solid.
No, it seems to me scientific kinds of supercession
are solid. As solid as anything gets in the sublunar
sphere. However, I agree that theological assertions
*can* be superceded---there are simply and transparently
false such assertions. However, what I would say is that
well-developed, well-thought-out theologies, such
as Augustine's *have not been superceded*, and are thus
perfectly contemporary. Augustine is an equal at the
discussion round-table right here and now, or much
better than an equal, since he's thought things out much
more deeply, extensively, and consistently than any
of us has. Aristotle is not a contemporary with respect
to the sex of bees, but most certainly is a contemporary
with respect to scientific method, reason, metaphysics,
ethics, politics (maybe not slavery, but what he means
there is highly debatable), and so on and so forth.
Jeff:
So, for example, as to the unchanging character of the
deity, and maybe Augustine addresses this, but what
does he make of the apparent discoveries made in
e.g. Genesis? Doesn't the wrath there suggest
surprise or disappointment? And doesn't such an
emotion suggest something learned? And doesn't
something learned suggest a development?
Do not the two pages I quoted for you from the
opening of _De Trinitate_ address this directly?
I mean, the point is that Augustine begins in St. Paul,
and pasages in St. Paul about the Trinity, and the unchangeable
nature of God, and then uses those passages to read any instance
of God's apparent changeableness as, well, a manifestation
of God (a substance, being outside of time) inside historical
time for the benefit of human minds, a revelation. I mean,
Augustine spends several books (out of 15) of the _Trinity_
discussing specific Old Testament examples of God's apparent
changeableness and how this might be achieved by God through
the mechanism of angels and the like.
Again, he has a formidable and coherent programme for
reading the Bible, and that programme is rather different
than yours. (It's different than mine, too, but I
am respecting not so much its difference---your average
fundie literalist reads it differently than I do, and
I have zero respect for that---as its rational
coherence, from a starting point in a very simple
faith, which faith I do not happen to share.)
Jeff:
I mean, if you're going to give humans autonomy
(pretending for a moment that that isn't a complicated and
ambiguous thing), don't you suddenly have the potential
for surprises?
Umm, technically according to Augustine (and according
to me, too, and I think biblically, or even just in Genesis,
if you like) humans have not been given autonomy at all.
They have been given an externally imposed Law and free will
with which to decide what to with it. Free will and
autonomy are not the same thing. A free choice to disobey
a law is not the same thing as a power to make the law the
different than the law is.
Jeff:
I presume a discussion about that could
at least potentially be counted as an "experiment",
don't you?
You are reading the God of Genesis as a literary
character, obviously bound in time by the events
of the text. He has some superhuman powers, sure,
but he is an all-too-human character. Augustine
is reading him as God, incorporeal spirit,
omnipotent, omnipresent, unchangeable being,
love, absolute justice, the source in fact of all
being and all good. So, textual statements in Genesis
about God's wrath or jealousy or repentance or covering
Moses's eyes with his hand and showing his hind
parts as he passes or wrestling with Jacob all
have to be *interpreted* in light of this starting
point of Augustine's faith.
Augustine *is* an example of a man with a radically
different starting value than you have. He is a much more
clear example thereof in my opinion than any ancient "multicultural*
Egyptian stuff about kheper beetles.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
Of course not. It's superceded by numerous passages in the Bible,
beforehand. So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's dilemma --
either take the whole thing as truth and forget "coherent reading" or
tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 9th of May, 2002
I said:
Well, I'm with Lew. It was just stupid. I mean, you can't claim
"metaphor" and rescue it thereby. A metaphor, in order
not be stupid, has to have a consistent and apt translation
of signifier and metaphorically signified. This one just betrays
that the poet didn't understand the signifier in the first
place.
Silke:
Nonsense.
Why nonsense?
Silke:
Terms travel from science to non-science and back again.
I never had any quarrel with that.
Silke:
They always gain, they always lose.
Nor with that.
Silke:
Metaphor relates to its constituents both by similarity and by
difference. Otherwise, you're dealing with synonym.
But it has to have a critical mass of similarity for it to *be*
metaphor. The terms of the 2nd Law refer to a closed
thermodynamic system and the evolution of the amount
of uncertainty that we have about the possible microstates
of system given some coarse-grained (information like
temperature, which is an average) knowledge of the system.
It is a law which is easily and often misunderstood and
misapplied---a young-earth creationist, for example who
points to human beings as examples of ordered systems
and who insists that this is a violation of the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics for such order to arise spontaneously, physically
without divine intervention. Of course, this misunderstands
the fact that a "human being" isn't a closed system, and that
we on earth live under a huge waterfall of input energy from the
sun. Now, *there's* a good metaphor---which I do not take credit
for, but get from a live lecture by Richard Feynman precisely
on the 2nd Law: Two lovers stand kissing beneath the spray
of a waterfall. A droplet splashes up from the pool onto her
nose. "See! See! The 2nd Law is wrong, because the drop
moved from a less ordered state (in the pond, with less stored
potential energy), to a more ordered state (higher up onto the nose)."
The waterfall is like the solar constant and we ordered systems are
like the droplet splashed up, and the mistake at interpreting the
2nd Law in both cases is not to recognize that the system is not
closed, that energy in the form of falling water or light is coming into
it. The downness has a pleasing similarity in both cases and there is
a correspondence between upness of the droplet and more order in
some evolutionary biological systems.
OK, so what are the correspondences between the 2nd Law
applied to the 2nd Law and the 2nd Law applied to a closed thermodynamic
system. What is the correspondent, Silke, of energy, of information,
of macrostates and microstates? It seems perfectly meaningless
to me.
Silke:
More and more, you strike
me as the type to object to Joyce's usage of "quark."
I said:
This is a bizarre change of direction. I mean,
I doubt that there even is such a type. Now,
objecting to Gell-Mann's appropriation of Joyce's term might
be another matter...
Silke:
Joyce's quark is an example for travel in the other direction. Recall
that metaphor means transport.
The objection that I would have to it (assuming that it did come
from FW as is commonly thought) is that the only thing that survives
the transport from literature to physics is threeness. It's not enough
of a correspondence to satisfy me, but I perfectly well acknowledge
we are stuck with the term.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
Just as anti-essentialism refers to a specific class of assertions about
essences, not to every given instance of certainty.
s
Hartmut Schmider
> The objection that I would have to it (assuming that it did come from FW as
> is commonly thought) is that the only thing that survives the transport
> from literature to physics is threeness. It's not enough of a
> correspondence to satisfy me, but I perfectly well acknowledge we are stuck
> with the term.
Noone brought this up until now, so I start to believe I am wrong, but I
thought Joyce ripped it off from Faust: "Und laeg er nur noch immer in dem
Grase, in jeden Quark begraebt er seine Nase." Since Joyce loved Goethe
that doesn't sound farfetched.
The triad there would be the Lord, Mephisto and (absent) Man.
On the other hand, cutting out the middle man, the image of burying one's
nose in the original matter (which could very well be thought of as curd)
is somewhat appealing.
Regards, Hartmut
--
Hartmut Schmider | Morality is a venereal disease.
Queen's University | Its primary stage is called virtue;
-- | its secondary stage, boredom;
h...@post.queensu.ca | its tertiary stage, syphilis. (Karl Kraus)
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 9th of May, 2002
Silke:
So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's dilemma --
either take the whole thing as truth and forget "coherent reading" or
tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
died, and was resurrected in time? Yeah, that is exactly what Augustine
is doing, reading it like that, tweaking one part against a starting faith
in another part, only with a different part of it ending up being tweaked
than the part you tweak.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Thursday, the 9th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's dilemma --
> either take the whole thing as truth and forget "coherent reading" or
> tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
>
>You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
>died, and was resurrected in time?
>
No, dear. I'm perfectly happy to say that that is one of many coexisting
stories in that fine book. Try again.
s
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 9th of May, 2002
Silke:
So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's dilemma --
either take the whole thing as truth and forget "coherent reading" or
tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
I said:
You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
died, and was resurrected in time?
Silke:
No, dear. I'm perfectly happy to say that that is one of many coexisting
stories in that fine book. Try again.
No, no. I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
it says that. Understand, I do get the born, dies, resurrected
bit for a fellow named Jesus, but Jesus actually *being* God, now,
that one puzzles me even in Augustine.
It ought to be really fun hearing why that one isn't a
"strong misreading", praiseworthy or no.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Thursday, the 9th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's dilemma --
> either take the whole thing as truth and forget "coherent reading" or
> tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
>I said:
> You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
> died, and was resurrected in time?
>Silke:
> No, dear. I'm perfectly happy to say that that is one of many coexisting
> stories in that fine book. Try again.
>
>No, no.
>
Well, yes.
On the whole, I'm with Levi-Strauss, "all versions belong to the myth."
>I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
>it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
>God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
>it says that.
>
Why no offer on Paul?
>Understand, I do get the born, dies, resurrected
>bit for a fellow named Jesus, but Jesus actually *being* God, now,
>that one puzzles me even in Augustine.
>
>It ought to be really fun hearing why that one isn't a
>"strong misreading", praiseworthy or no.
>
I was meeting you in Augustine here, who does count him as God, hence my
contention that he can't see the "immutable" thing through.
Myself, I'd happily settle for divine on the NT evidence.
s
Don Tuite
<msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
>Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
>it says that.
"And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." presumably refers
to somebody, no?
Don
Lewis Mammel
Lewis Mammel wrote:
>
> James Whitehead wrote:
> ... I don't blame science for this technology but wish the
> > teachers of science wouldn't have such cultural prejudices which reveal
> > themselves in the bigotry of their students. The Sokal affair is a
> > shameful example. There are others. ...
>
> Can you place this?
>
> The very public counterattack by the scientific conservatives and
> their publicists is by no means unexpected. What needs explanation
> is why the scientific establishment, which for years ignored or
> curtly dismissed critics such as Nietzsche and members of the
> Frankfurt School as antediluvian cranks, has chosen this moment
> to recognize that the challenge is worthy of reply.
>
Here's more from the same place - different author, same editor
In these wars, the self-appointed defenders of Science are
seeking to police the boundaries of knowledge and to resurrect
canonical knowledge of nature, against the attempts of the
Others ( including feminists, antiracists, psyhcoanalysts,
postcolonialists, leftists, multiculturalists, relativists,
postmodernists, etc., etc., in all our belwildering diversity )
to extend, transform, or maybe even dissolve the boundaries
between the privileged truth claims of science and other
knowledges.
Catching on?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Jeff Inman
Um. So, doesn't that look like a reasonable place to
start proposing that there is development going on
over there? New ideas.
Jeff
Kater Moggin
[Genesis]
>>> Doesn't the wrath there suggest
>>> surprise or disappointment? And doesn't such an
>>> emotion suggest something learned? And doesn't
>>> something learned suggest a development?
Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
>> I'm not sure which wrath you mean, but the one just before
>> the Flood suggests disappointment and then some. Here's
>> Genesis 6:6: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on
>> the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." You already
>> know his solution. "And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom
>> I have created from the face of the earth." Also all the
>> other living creatures. One of his better ideas, really -- too
>> bad he didn't follow through.
Jeff:
> Um. So, doesn't that look like a reasonable place to
> start proposing that there is development going on
> over there? New ideas.
Right. I was agreeing with you. Kind of shocking, I know.
Incidentally, there's a midrash which says God made and
destroyed any number of worlds before he created the heaven and
earth we know -- the first ones he liked.
James Whitehead
<msmo...@netdirect.net> writes
>Silke:
> Metaphor relates to its constituents both by similarity and by
> difference. Otherwise, you're dealing with synonym.
>
>But it has to have a critical mass of similarity for it to *be*
>metaphor. The terms of the 2nd Law refer to a closed
>thermodynamic system and the evolution of the amount
>of uncertainty that we have about the possible microstates
>of system given some coarse-grained (information like
>temperature, which is an average) knowledge of the system.
And i read somewhere that the only such "closed" system is the
*universe* where we find the theory? And here is the philosophy bit -
you seem to be stepping outside this universe!
>
>It is a law which is easily and often misunderstood and
>misapplied--
Please - is this Von Neumann and Tipler?
But not to Von Neumann. Let you construct such theories as the second
law without recourse to it? Think about this, and if so try to get a
brain scan at the time and see the change in heat patterns in your
head....
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>
I'm rather more and more confused, it began when you - is this you?
posted-
>The 2nd law of thermodynamics isn't subject to the 2nd law of
>thermodynamics any more than the Law of Universal Gravitation
>is subject to the Law of Universal Gravitation. How could it
>be? What can you even mean by this question?
The above like the law itself is information - which is i thought bound
to the said 2nd law.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<msmo...@netdirect.net> writes
>No, no. I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
>it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
>God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
>it says that.
you probably know these - but here goes-
John
8:58
"I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am"
and
12:45
"And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me"
&
14:9
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<msmo...@netdirect.net> writes
>
>
> Wednesday, the 8th of May, 2002
>
> Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
> applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
> Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
> Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate
> to your incapacity to read literature.
>
you wouldn't like to say why? as i'm with Von Neumann, Tipler et al.
Because i cant see how you can have information without organisation
which requires energy...
>I mean, you can't claim
>"metaphor" and rescue it thereby. A metaphor, in order
>not be stupid, has to have a consistent and apt translation
>of signifier and metaphorically signified. This one just betrays
>that the poet didn't understand the signifier in the first
>place.
Ugh? Like the term "Ground Zero" - is that "stupid" - doesn't this
mistake what the term originally meant. The position on the ground
underneath a nuclear air-burst?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>
>
>James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> In article <3CD8957D...@worldnet.att.net>, Lewis Mammel
>> <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>> >
>> >
>> >James Whitehead wrote:
>
>> >> That
>> >> the universe could degenerate into a chaotic state where no such laws
>> >> could be - including anything holding this law ... is interesting.
>> >
>> >The universe IS in a chaotic state. That's why the law is of interest
>> >in the first place. It's the atomic structure of matter, and the chaotic
>> >motion of its atomic constituents that is the key to thermodynamics.
>>
>> Ok i'm ignorant of that interpretation,
>
>Welcome to the nineteenth century.
I not sure how to answer this- firstly is it OK to jump halfway into a
proposition in order to falsify it?
>
>> seems what i call a mess
>> scientists call order - i thought the law was about entropy. Now
>> checking my "Science Desk Reference" ... "Thermodynamics studies the
>> dynamics of heat.
>
>This is a misreading of the term. "Thermodynamics" derives from
>"Thermo-dynamic engines" which is descriptive of the conversion
>of heat into motive power. Compare "dynamoelectric machine"
>( "dynamo" for short ) which converts motive power into electric
>power. ( http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/paper.php?id=8 )
I looked it up in a reference book - obviously a silly thing to do. I
suggest you contact the publisher Macmillan and let them in on their
authors and the PHd editorial teams "misreading". The definition goes on
- "It arose from the study of steam engines... the results had far
reaching implications in other branches of science and even in
philosophy" Now are you saying this is WRONG?
BTW i do like the idea that *misreading* of thermodynamics as the
dynamics of heat.
>
>> ... the results of that work had far reaching
>> implications in other branches of science and even in philosophy.... 2.
>> Heat will always flow "downhill" .... in mathematical and physical
>> terms a system in which everything is at the same temperature is
>> considered "orderly"
>
>This is backwards. Everything at the same temperature is maximum
>disorder, as in complete mixing.
Again then the reference book is wrong, and my original use therefore
correct. Actually did the original laws of thermodynamics involve an
atomic theory?
And now "everything at the same temperature is maximum disorder" - how
do we then get a universe in a chaotic state from this maximum state of
"maximum" disorder. My dictionary defines Chaos as dis-order. No i think
if you want a chaotic moving and dynamic universe the one at the bottom
of this - having no chaotic movement or differences must be thought as
being as the text book says- "ordered". "and higher temperatures
introduce "disorder".. " Anyway get your terminology sorted and i'll
join back in.
Are you saying a chaotic universe is more ordered than a non chaotic
one? My reference uses scare quotes to warn i guess the sense of this
being opposite to common sense. Are you mixing the scientific idea with
common sense usage- if you want more chaotic states in the higher the
temperatures you need to move to a more ordered state as you get more
even distribution at lower energy levels? Yes?
>
>> ...this principle applies to all kinds of energy"
>> Now why doesn't this law apply to ordering or entropy with regards to
>> information, knowledge etc. Surely entropy is at work when messages get
>> confused...?
>
>It's certainly a tempting parallel, but randomization is a simpler concept,
>and in fact part of the premise for the definition of entropy, which presumes
>a dynamical system with many random degrees of freedom, and goes on from there.
Its more as the article says "far reaching implications in other
branches of science and even in philosophy" If you are saying the
article is wrong i'll take due note, and proceed with caution. I
actually don't need the article - only that *laws cannot exist in a
universe at maximum entropy.* Now can you explain how you can maintain
that laws can exist in a universe at maximum entropy? Please?
>
>The concept of entropy derives from the circumstances in which it obtains.
>You have followed the tendency to reify it as some kind of agency.
I have followed the reference material which you say is wrong. But i
still can use my argument as above.
>
>> The very fact that that the system called Science should
>> run downhill.... is predicted by the "philosophical" implications of the
>> law. So rather than a physicist study physics as his entropy increases
>> he throws rocks in all general directions?
>
>How then does philosophy account for the presence of science on the
>top of the hill in the first place? This is mythic metaphor, not
>philosophy.
Not on top of the hill, running down it. If you don't want the metaphor
then simply explain how in a universe of constant even temperature can
you have science or philosophy? I know Tipler et al. is in your book
stupid but he does raise this point. The metaphor heat *death* might be
a clue, dead - get it. The second law has in it its own death.
You've no idea of what i think philosophy is. All i've done is quote
from a science reference book.
> It reminds me
>of the popular notion of The Coriolis Force as sort of a genie,
>"Ever Whirling Coriolis" I like to call it, who rules over toilets
>and drains. This is one of those "cross-over" ideas that Silke speaks
>of. It gained and it lost. It gained intrigue, but it lost all reason.
One task of philosophy has been considered to point out the
contradictions made by others... and elsewhere the implications of
certain propositions.. your muddle with chaos and order for instance.
>
>> >But a ball of string and a brain
>> >have thermodynamic properties when considered as material systems. The
>> >string has a temperature and a heat capacity etc., but the brain is the
>> >site of some chemical transformations which can be analyzed
>thermodynamically,
>> >so it's got that going for it, but the more subtle significance of what
>> >transpires there is something that transcends thermodynamic analysis, IMHO.
>>
>> Ahh! but lets not be so humble in transcending the second law. Why? How
>> So? we ask... what is it that goes on in the Brain that in principle is
>> so different as to transcend a physical law.
>
>That's the $64,000 question. N.B. transcend != contradict
Of course not, so the processes of the human mind need not contradict
the law of thermodynamics... that we can have a definite "thing" which
is outside the laws of thermodynamics? Is this where the law lives also?
Or is this pseudo platonic metaphysics? A brain in a state of maximum
entropy can have "things"?
I know the guy is in your view stupid but " John von Neumann and others
have shown that information processing is constrained by the First and
Second Laws of Thermodynamics..." its Tipler - the John guy you probably
also know? How close is this to Silke's observation - aren't the laws of
science *information*?
>
>> This strikes me as the very
>> act of stepping out of a 12 floor window and not falling....
>
>Yet, here we are.
No - its where you are.. if you are one of those who use the laws of
gravity to refute some arguments regarding relative interpretations of
the world. Just to clear things up maybe Silke is making some point
about metaphor - but i can't help feeling that information processing
and laws of science are kind of related? Now if tipler and von neumann
say - 'sure are', and i can follow this, information is about organising
- stuff which requires energy?
How is the law of thermodynamics different to a sonnet?
And can you not see that the "turkey dinner" with its arrangement of
vegetables set out on the table can be like a theory - comes into being
and passes out of being. Otherwise you have a platonic ghost world
containing the laws of physics and turkey dinners... is that what you
are saying, and to this realm the mind can also transcend?
--
James Whitehead
Michael Dorfman
Holy shit-- a post from James that is not only germane, but indicates
that he's read the text? File this one under "Additional Signs of the
End-Times"....
Michael Dorfman
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
Silke:
So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's
dilemma -- either take the whole thing as truth and
forget "coherent reading" or tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
I said:
You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
died, and was resurrected in time?
Silke:
No, dear. I'm perfectly happy to say that that is
one of many coexisting stories in that fine book. Try again.
I said:
No, no.
Silke:
Well, yes.
No. *Collection of books*, not book.
Silke:
On the whole, I'm with Levi-Strauss, "all versions
belong to the myth."
It ain't a version, but a "strong misreading" of
one book in terms of what another book says.
I said:
I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
it says that.
Silke:
Why no offer on Paul?
Isn't this obvious? Because that *is* what Augustine
is doing. If are permitted to invoke Paul in order to
read Matthew differently than you would if you just
had Matthew, then so can Augustine. You are either
both misreading (or is it "misreading"?), or neither
of you necessarily is, and his reading, given its scope
and logical coherence, begins looking better and better.
I said:
Understand, I do get the born, dies, resurrected
bit for a fellow named Jesus, but Jesus actually *being* God, now,
that one puzzles me even in Augustine.
It ought to be really fun hearing why that one isn't a
"strong misreading", praiseworthy or no.
Silke:
I was meeting you in Augustine here, who does
count him as God, hence my contention that he can't
see the "immutable" thing through.
But, the *way* he reads the Bible---as a single, divine
communication from God to Man is the thing that *permits*
him to read the biography in Matthew as "about" God in the
first place. He reads the gospels through the radical
theological lens of Paul, is what I said. OK, but it is
*that same lens* which gives him the Trinity and the
absolute unchangeableness---the incorporeality---of the
substance of God. You, it seems to me, want to invoke
Paul to read Matthew, but only invoke him a little bit,
and no farther. I see no coherence in that one at all.
Why invoke Paul in the first place? I suspect you are
just invoking tradition and authority for the sake
of the standard "objective external observer" snipes at
it. It is quite possible that the tradition and authority
you are invoking traces itself back to...Augustine.
But, anyway, I don't get the Jesus-is-God thing in
the first place if you are not going to buy into
a central feature of Augustine's program. I personally
don't believe that central thing, so I can read Matthew
without Jesus *being* God.
Silke:
Myself, I'd happily settle for divine on the NT evidence.
The New Testament is a collection of books, an anthology,
not a *book* by a single author...unless you believe
the central Christian thing that Augustine does.
If you don't believe that, then there is no *reason*
for you to invoke Paul to read the synoptics, any more
than say adding in Augustine's oevre to the biblical
canon and reading everything in the Bible according to
how Augustine says to read it. Or, pick your favourite
theologian...
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
>
>Silke:
> So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's
> dilemma -- either take the whole thing as truth and
> forget "coherent reading" or tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
>I said:
> You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
> died, and was resurrected in time?
>Silke:
> No, dear. I'm perfectly happy to say that that is
> one of many coexisting stories in that fine book. Try again.
>I said:
> No, no.
>Silke:
> Well, yes.
>
>No. *Collection of books*, not book.
>
Give me a fucking break, Morris. It's "the book," okay? We have no
record of it coming in little individual editions, like Shakespeare. Its
history, and its significance to Augustine, is as a book, not as "books."
>Silke:
> On the whole, I'm with Levi-Strauss, "all versions
> belong to the myth."
>
>It ain't a version, but a "strong misreading" of
>one book in terms of what another book says.
>
>I said:
> I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
> it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
> God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
> it says that.
>Silke:
> Why no offer on Paul?
>
>Isn't this obvious? Because that *is* what Augustine
>is doing. If are permitted to invoke Paul in order to
>read Matthew differently than you would if you just
>had Matthew, then so can Augustine. You are either
>both misreading (or is it "misreading"?), or neither
>of you necessarily is, and his reading, given its scope
>and logical coherence, begins looking better and better.
>
Paul, like Augustine, wants to force a heterogeneous source into a
coherent reading. I don't. Which is not to say that my reading is more
valuable -- obviously, theirs are, by pretty much any standard you can
think up. Except for one.
Huh? We are agreed, are we, that Augustine counts J as G. And we are
agreed that J has a biography, yes? That he moves in time, changes,
etc., yes?
You really can't fill in the blanks from here?
s
Hartmut Schmider
> The above like the law itself is information - which is i thought bound to
> the said 2nd law.
I assume you mean Shannon's notion of information entropy. The measure
-Sum(p ln p) was called entropy because of its formal equivalence to the
expression of entropy in statistical thermodynamics. But the notion of
information there has nothing to do with content, ie, it's hard to see what
the connection with the content of the law would be.
Just because it makes sense to define an information measure that has the
same form as entropy in thermodynamics, doesn't mean that the whole
apparatus of thermodynamics is applicable to information theory. And even
if that would be the case, it's quite dubious that information theory would
be applicable to what we call "information" in everyday language, including
the one used to describe thermodynamics.
Those connections sound cool but so does the latest Metallica album.
Don Tuite
wrote:
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> The above like the law itself is information - which is i thought bound to
>> the said 2nd law.
>
>I assume you mean Shannon's notion of information entropy. The measure
>-Sum(p ln p) was called entropy because of its formal equivalence to the
>expression of entropy in statistical thermodynamics. But the notion of
>information there has nothing to do with content, ie, it's hard to see what
>the connection with the content of the law would be.
>
>Just because it makes sense to define an information measure that has the
>same form as entropy in thermodynamics, doesn't mean that the whole
>apparatus of thermodynamics is applicable to information theory. And even
>if that would be the case, it's quite dubious that information theory would
>be applicable to what we call "information" in everyday language, including
>the one used to describe thermodynamics.
I agree with the second part, but If I understood Weaver, Shannon's
theory nicely resolves the Maxwell's Demon paradox, which *is* Thermo.
Don
James Whitehead
<h...@post.queensu.ca> writes
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> The above like the law itself is information - which is i thought bound to
>> the said 2nd law.
>
>I assume you mean Shannon's notion of information entropy.
No i don't - i was vaguely aware of that - but quoting Tipler who
referred to Von Neumann - and each bit irreversibly stored requires kT
Ln of free energy....
> The measure
>-Sum(p ln p) was called entropy because of its formal equivalence to the
>expression of entropy in statistical thermodynamics. But the notion of
>information there has nothing to do with content, ie, it's hard to see what
>the connection with the content of the law would be.
Because how I'm asking is the law stored as information? And how without
recourse to energy are laws used? But i have a feeling i'm wasting my
time with this point- i'm just going to get some maths flung at me with
a mild insult?
>
>Just because it makes sense to define an information measure that has the
>same form as entropy in thermodynamics, doesn't mean that the whole
>apparatus of thermodynamics is applicable to information theory.
I'm not talking about information theory, i'm asking how in a universe
at a state of maximum entropy you can have information, yet alone
process or create it?
> And even
>if that would be the case, it's quite dubious that information theory would
>be applicable to what we call "information" in everyday language, including
>the one used to describe thermodynamics.
OK - so information theory occurs independent of any system which
requires matter and energy?
>
>Those connections sound cool but so does the latest Metallica album.
>
>Regards, Hartmut
>
Tell be how you intend listening to this album without involving
processes described by the laws of thermodynamics. Surly the law states
your record collection is doomed due to the energy requirements to keep
the information in a recognisable form.
Metallica - my god!
Ob (whatever that means) Sysyphus - pink floyd
--
James Whitehead
Hartmut Schmider
> I agree with the second part, but If I understood Weaver, Shannon's
> theory nicely resolves the Maxwell's Demon paradox, which *is* Thermo.
Yes. But Maxwell's Demon is constructed in such a way as to apply the
notion of information as statistical non-degeneracy to a thermodynamic
system. Maxwell's Demon and it's resolution demonstrate why information
entropy has the same form as thermodynamic entropy. You could say that for
thermodynamic systems, information entropy is thermodynamic entropy. But
that is not because thermodynamics applies to everything information theory
applies to, but because if you apply the concept of information theory to a
thermodynamic system, you end up with thermodynamic entropy.
Putting it in a different way, information entropy is the more fundamental
concept, although it was inspired by thermodynamics in some way. If the
concept is applied to an infinite number of point particles with discrete
energy levels, one arrives at "real" entropy and the 2nd law. That doesn't
mean it is meaningful to apply the 2nd law backwards to everything that has
some however loose connection to information. Particularly when the
connection is established by the common-sense meaning of information as
content.
Ah, what the heck, maybe there is a connection, and I'm just too dumb to
see it. Let people have their fun...
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
Silke:
Metaphor relates to its constituents both by similarity and by
difference. Otherwise, you're dealing with synonym.
I said:
But it has to have a critical mass of similarity for it to *be*
metaphor. The terms of the 2nd Law refer to a closed
thermodynamic system and the evolution of the amount
of uncertainty that we have about the possible microstates
of system given some coarse-grained (information like
temperature, which is an average) knowledge of the system.
James Whitehead:
And i read somewhere that the only such "closed" system is the
*universe* where we find the theory?
Not necessarily true at all. In the first place,
the universe might not be closed. In the second,
the Law makes a statement about measured quantities---
one can do pretty good job of thermally isolating a
system, and then measure the time-evolution of entropy
(as a state variable) to such-and-such a level of
precision, which level will depend upon the thermal
isolation. I.e., we can close a system measurably well,
and the universe may not be closed, may have energy
input, for all we know.
James:
And here is the philosophy bit -
you seem to be stepping outside this universe!
This is identical to C.S. Lewis's observation about
the miraculousness of reason itself. An idea, a theory
stands outside the physical. It is *not*, for instance
the same thing as a physical brain state, or some ink
on a page.
I was saying:
It is a law which is easily and often misunderstood and
misapplied--
James interrupts:
Please - is this Von Neumann and Tipler?
I was continuing:
-a young-earth creationist, for example who
points to human beings as examples of ordered systems
and who insists that this is a violation of the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics [...]
No. I was limning a standard argument I have heard
spouted by several Joe Average yecs.
Later I said:
OK, so what are the correspondences between the 2nd Law
applied to the 2nd Law and the 2nd Law applied to a closed thermodynamic
system. What is the correspondent, Silke, of energy, of information,
of macrostates and microstates? It seems perfectly meaningless
to me.
James:
But not to Von Neumann. Let you construct such theories as the
second law without recourse to it? Think about this, and if so try to
get a brain scan at the time and see the change in heat patterns in your
head....
The fact the functioning of my brain, a physical system, obeys the
2nd Law (insofar as science can infer) has precisely *nothing* to do
with the 2nd Law per se. I mean, I could perfectly well think
(erroneously) some opposite physical theory which says something
else entirely about entropy, and *still* my brain states and function
would obey the 2nd Law. I could write it down and my muscles when
I did so, and the ink and paper would also all obey the 2nd Law,
even I were drawing plans for a perpetual motion machine.
In other words, what you are talking about, James, is *not*
metaphor at all, but the fact that the 2nd Law applies to
thinking as physical activity of brain. There is precisely nothing
profound in it.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
I wrote:
No, no. I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
it says that.
James:
you probably know these -
Offhand, I didn't think of them, but, yes, I've read them
multiple times and was hoping someone would suggest
them.
James:
but here goes-
John
8:58
"I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am"
Nothing about *being* God here, James. The person
speaking this, even assuming he is being truthful and
not a mystic nut-case, could be an angel.
James:
and
12:45
"And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me"
This is perfectly elliptical. He that seeth the Grand Canyon
seeth God. It doesn't mean the Grand Canyon is God. "To see"
might well be a metaphor for "to know" or "to understand".
James:
&
14:9
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"
Same objection. Plus the fact that the Father and God
are not necessarily the same thing. One needs a theology
in order to say that.
James, by all means believe what you want to believe
here. I am only saying that a Christian believer reads statements
like these in a certain way *because* he believes in the
way that he does. Us non-Christians, well, at least some
of us find such passages enigmatic, altogether unclear.
I mean, the man had four gospels in which to communicate
with us---if he wanted us to believe he was God, why didn't
he just come out and say unambiguously "I am God"?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
Silke:
So Augustine is faced with every fundamentalist's
dilemma -- either take the whole thing as truth and
forget "coherent reading" or tweak the damn thing so it'll fit.
I said:
You mean tweak it like you did by claiming that God was born,
died, and was resurrected in time?
Silke:
No, dear. I'm perfectly happy to say that that is
one of many coexisting stories in that fine book. Try again.
I said:
No, no.
Silke:
Well, yes.
I said:
No. *Collection of books*, not book.
Silke:
Give me a fucking break, Morris.
Not at all. To take a single line from St. Paul back into
Matthew in order to read Matthew is to *buy into* exactly
the kind of program Augustine is doing. There is no textual
authority for doing that. There is only faith that epistles of Paul
and the gospel of Matthew have some unified thing to do with
one another. Unless you wish to appeal to the authority of
some church council, and defend their selection of which
books are in and which out of the biblical canon.
Silke:
It's "the book," okay?
Not OK, sorry. I'm a scientist, alive in 2002. I live
in historical time *after* Reimarus. I've read
Richard Elliott Friedman's splendid _Who Wrote the
Bible?_. I find the disentanglement of J and E and P
and such pretty darn convincing even *within* individual
biblical books. I find it convincing that the historical
Jesus, which I am even no small amount doubtful of,
if he existed probably *was* a Pharisee (travelling
rabbis who went around teaching back-to-basics
"love God and love thy neigbour" stuff in the century
before Christ), so that all the anti-Pharisee ravings found
put in the mouth of Jesus in the synoptics probably were
written after the Pauline/Petrine split and are part of
the Pauline anti-hebraizing propaganda. I certainly
don't believe Jesus is or was divine. If he even existed
historically at all.That is the way *I* read it. So, somebody
comes along telling me Jesus is God, I wonder where
they get that from. On whose authority? It certainly doesn't
say so in the gospels.
Silke:
We have no record of it coming in little individual editions, like
Shakespeare.
Huh? I haven't a clue what you are trying to say. We most certainly
have a church-council record of the Christian assembly of
the biblical canon from out of proposed individual texts. We have
individual "biblical" books which were not included in the canon. We
also have manuscripts of individual biblical books dating from
different times.
Silke:
Its history, and its significance to Augustine, is as a book,
not as "books."
But, this is *because* of the way Augustine reads it, as though
there were one divine Author behind it, using all of these individual
authors as His instrument. I do not share Augustine's faith, so
I don't believe there is one Author behind it all. So, I see Paul
as a religious man, creating something pretty wild out of
his experiences in the holy land. I do not take Paul as *the way*
to read Matthew, let alone Genesis, as Augustine does.
I mean, if you want to use Paul to read Matthew, say so. But,
understand that at that point from my angle you are doing nothing
more rational than Augustine is doing (and probably a lot less
rational, since you probably have it much less worked out).
I said:
I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
it says that.
Silke:
Why no offer on Paul?
I said:
Isn't this obvious? Because that *is* what Augustine
is doing. If you are permitted to invoke Paul in order to
read Matthew differently than you would if you just
had Matthew, then so can Augustine. You are either
both misreading (or is it "misreading"?), or neither
of you necessarily is, and his reading, given its scope
and logical coherence, begins looking better and better.
Silke:
Paul, like Augustine, wants to force a heterogeneous source into a
coherent reading. I don't.
Fine. Then Jesus ain't God, and you have no tool with
which to make him so.
Silke:
Which is not to say that my reading is more valuable --
obviously, theirs are, by pretty much any standard you can
think up. Except for one.
We have just established that according to you, Jesus isn't
God, since in order for you to say that he is God, you
*will* have to force a heterogenous source into a coherent
reading.
Fine, then your original beef with Augustine's theology evaporates.
You aren't doing theology.
I said:
Understand, I do get the born, dies, resurrected
bit for a fellow named Jesus, but Jesus actually *being* God, now,
that one puzzles me even in Augustine.
It ought to be really fun hearing why that one isn't a
"strong misreading", praiseworthy or no.
Silke:
I was meeting you in Augustine here, who does
count him as God, hence my contention that he can't
see the "immutable" thing through.
I said:
But, the *way* he reads the Bible---as a single, divine
communication from God to Man is the thing that *permits*
him to read the biography in Matthew as "about" God in the
first place. He reads the gospels through the radical
theological lens of Paul, is what I said. OK, but it is
*that same lens* which gives him the Trinity and the
absolute unchangeableness---the incorporeality---of the
substance of God. You, it seems to me, want to invoke
Paul to read Matthew, but only invoke him a little bit,
and no farther. I see no coherence in that one at all.
Why invoke Paul in the first place? I suspect you are
just invoking tradition and authority for the sake
of the standard "objective external observer" snipes at
it. It is quite possible that the tradition and authority
you are invoking traces itself back to...Augustine.
Silke:
Huh? We are agreed, are we, that Augustine counts J as G.
In a delicate sense, yes.
Silke:
And we are agreed that J has a biography, yes? That he moves in time,
changes,
etc., yes?
We are not agreed that to Augustine *J as God* has a biography, no.
Silke:
You really can't fill in the blanks from here?
No, you haven't read the Augustine that I have. So, of course
you don't get it. And you keep making the same erroneous
assertions about how you are certain Augustine must be reading it,
except he isn't, so, well, you're wrong. And we come back to
the simple fact that in Augustine's trinitarian theology God---Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost---is unchangeable incorporeal substance.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
[irrelevancies]
>
>Silke:
> Its history, and its significance to Augustine, is as a book,
> not as "books."
>
>But, this is *because* of the way Augustine reads it, as though
>there were one divine Author behind it, using all of these individual
>authors as His instrument. I do not share Augustine's faith, so
>I don't believe there is one Author behind it all. So, I see Paul
>as a religious man, creating something pretty wild out of
>his experiences in the holy land. I do not take Paul as *the way*
>to read Matthew, let alone Genesis, as Augustine does.
>
Neither do I, d'uh -- what's your point?
>I mean, if you want to use Paul to read Matthew, say so. But,
>understand that at that point from my angle you are doing nothing
>more rational than Augustine is doing (and probably a lot less
>rational, since you probably have it much less worked out).
>
can you keep the terms of our disagreement in your head for, say, five
minutes?
>I said:
> I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
> it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
> God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
> it says that.
>Silke:
> Why no offer on Paul?
>I said:
> Isn't this obvious? Because that *is* what Augustine
> is doing. If you are permitted to invoke Paul in order to
> read Matthew differently than you would if you just
> had Matthew, then so can Augustine. You are either
> both misreading (or is it "misreading"?), or neither
> of you necessarily is, and his reading, given its scope
> and logical coherence, begins looking better and better.
>Silke:
> Paul, like Augustine, wants to force a heterogeneous source into a
> coherent reading. I don't.
>
>Fine. Then Jesus ain't God, and you have no tool with
>which to make him so.
>
I have no interest in claiming that Jesus is God, or that there is God.
The point, as perhaps you will recall, was the following: I claimed that
Augustine fails in coherently presenting an immutable God because he
says things about this God that are in conflict with immutability. I
further claimed that Augustine's reading of an immutable God is in
conflict with the bible _as a whole_, i.e. as _he_ wants to read it.
The only thing that matters concerning the first point, then, is
_Augustine's_ take on Jesus. As as far as A is concerned, J is God.
Flesh in time. Mutable. Mutating.
As to the second, moggin and Jeff have given you a passage to
comment on.
>Silke:
> Which is not to say that my reading is more valuable --
> obviously, theirs are, by pretty much any standard you can
> think up. Except for one.
>
>We have just established that according to you, Jesus isn't
>God, since in order for you to say that he is God, you
>*will* have to force a heterogenous source into a coherent
>reading.
>
According to me, nobody is God. Which is entirely irrelevant. The
question, to repeat, is a) does the Bible in its entirety present an
immutable God?, b) is Augustine's account of the immutable God
consistent with his reading of the Bible in its entirety.
Perhaps you can give some indication that you understand what
you're arguing about.
s
Hartmut Schmider
> No i don't - i was vaguely aware of that - but quoting Tipler who
> referred to Von Neumann - and each bit irreversibly stored requires kT
> Ln of free energy....
OK.
> Because how I'm asking is the law stored as information? And how without
> recourse to energy are laws used? But i have a feeling i'm wasting my
> time with this point- i'm just going to get some maths flung at me with
> a mild insult?
No offense intended. I was just making the point that I can't see a way of
looking at the 2nd law as a thermodynamical system. I have no problem with
looking at Tipler and von Neuman as thermodynamical systems.
> I'm not talking about information theory, i'm asking how in a universe
> at a state of maximum entropy you can have information, yet alone
> process or create it?
Well, the universe is not yet in a state of maximum entropy, since otherwise
all processes would have come to an end. If you are concerned about storage
of the 2nd law (in the form of books, papers, tapes, memories, thoughts?),
I'd say, well, yes in that sense the 2nd law applies: our brains are gonna
rot and in the process we'll forget about the 2nd law. But I'm one of those
weirdos who thinks it's still going to be there long after it's forgotten.
Not really pomo, I know.
> OK - so information theory occurs independent of any system which
> requires matter and energy?
Going out on a limb here: yes.
> Tell be how you intend listening to this album without involving
> processes described by the laws of thermodynamics. Surly the law states
> your record collection is doomed due to the energy requirements to keep
> the information in a recognisable form.
No doubt about it. And the CD with my physical chemistry text and von
Neuman's paper's as well. Once the 2nd law has done away with all the
copies of itself, it's gone? What about a little piece of lightly organized
matter that managed to survive the last information carrier reminding us of
it's destroyer? Is that going to be spared?
> Metallica - my god!
OK. I got carried away. Shoot me.
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
James Whitehead wrote:
Smw(?) raised the question about the theory of the second law
applying to itself and i kind of liked it.
Lew:
Well, I think it's kind of stupid.
Silke:
Your incapacity to read extended metaphor just may relate
to your incapacity to read literature.
I said:
Well, I'm with Lew. It was just stupid.
James:
you wouldn't like to say why?
I thought I have been. The 2nd Law applies to a closed
thermodynamic system, refers to the time evolution of
the lack of information we will have about a system of possible
microstates where all we have to begin with is coarse-grained
(i.e., average) macrostate information. It is trivial to observe
that the 2nd Law applies to physical systems like human brains
and pages from books with the ink written on them. That isn't
in dispute. But the 2nd Law itself isn't a physical system, it isn't
even the state of some physical system---some specific brain
configuration isn't the 2nd Law, even if it corresponds to us thinking
about the 2nd Law. Some ink on a page isn't the 2nd Law either.
The 2nd Law is an idea, an object of mind, not brain. As an object
of mind, it has no correspondent analogues to the kinds of
things that the 2nd Law applies to---it isn't an energy system,
there are no microstates or macrostates, etc..
James Whitehead:
as i'm with Von Neumann, Tipler et al.
You would have to elaborate precisely what you mean
for me to understand what it means to be with "with"
Von Neumann or Paul Tipler. I've met and like Paul Tipler.
I'm with him, too, on some of his published results in "global
methods" General Relativity Theory. However, I also think
there are a number of things he says I'm not "with" him on.
James:
Because i cant see how you can have information
without organisation which requires energy...
So, an IGUS (Information Gathering and Utilizing
System, such as a human being or a robot) will
obey the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics insofar as
it is thermodynamically isolated from its environment.
And, if it is not thermally isolated, but takes in
energy, then maybe a physicist can draw a box around
a larger thing (such as human plus biosphere plus sun)
and the larger thing will be thermally isolated enough
for it to obey the 2nd Law (entropy increases overall,
though some corners of the system might see an entropy
decrease). But, "information", again,---a "brain state" more
or less, is not the same thing as a Theory of Physics, which is
an idea, an object of mind.
I said:
I mean, you can't claim "metaphor" and rescue
it thereby. A metaphor, in order not be stupid,
has to have a consistent and apt translation of
signifier and metaphorically signified. This one just
betrays that the poet didn't understand the signifier
in the first place.
James:
Ugh? Like the term "Ground Zero" - is that "stupid" -
doesn't this mistake what the term originally meant.
The position on the ground underneath a nuclear air-burst?
Ground Zero at the WTC is *like* ground zero underneath a
nuclear blast. There is a *similarity* between the two that
makes the one a good vessel for the other. We use "male"
and "female" as common metaphors for things that have
"outies" and "innies". A plug is male, an outlet is female.
That is metaphorical and there is a correspondence between
the one and the other. What I'm complaining about here
is someone calling a bowling ball male---a bowling ball
doesn't have "outieness" anymore---it has convexity as
opposed to concavity is all, which I think isn't the same
thing as "outieness", and it's only distinguishing features
(aside from its sphericity) are the fingerhole "innies". Or, it's
even worse than calling a bowling ball "male", because at least
with a bowling ball and metaphorical "maleness" the categories
are the same, one is at least talking about shape. What if one
talked of NASCAR racing as female and IndyCar racing as
male? The categories would be so unrelated and unmappable
as to lose any sense, to be stupid. Would one be referring
metaphorically to the shape of the cars involved, the speeds
of the race, or to the social quality of the race fans?
Not everything is a suitable metaphor for everything else, is
all. The 2nd Law "applying to the 2nd Law" doesn't seem
to be a metaphor for anything.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
jimC
Yes, yes, but will literalism combust too as the rest
of the universe goes to pot? Or does the "I don't get it"
reaction continue to activate automatically in perpetua with no
apparent source of energy? After all, she had asked it sarcastically
of a poster who had taken time out from his busy writing schedule
to patch up the laws of physics.
--
jimC
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
Silke:
Its history, and its significance to Augustine, is as a book,
not as "books."
I said:
But, this is *because* of the way Augustine reads it, as though
there were one divine Author behind it, using all of these individual
authors as His instrument. I do not share Augustine's faith, so
I don't believe there is one Author behind it all. So, I see Paul
as a religious man, creating something pretty wild out of
his experiences in the holy land. I do not take Paul as *the way*
to read Matthew, let alone Genesis, as Augustine does.
Silke:
Neither do I, d'uh -- what's your point?
You asked for Paul with which to read "God is born, dies, is
resurrected" into Matthew. The second you start on that path, why
not also take from Paul his evident Platonism, and *apply that
to Matthew*, too?
I said:
I mean, if you want to use Paul to read Matthew, say so. But,
understand that at that point from my angle you are doing nothing
more rational than Augustine is doing (and probably a lot less
rational, since you probably have it much less worked out).
Silke:
can you keep the terms of our disagreement in your head for, say, five
minutes?
You are the one who keeps switching them. I objected to your implication
that there is no theology which has an unchanging biblical God. I
objected to it because I just got finished with reading Augustine's
_The Trinity_, which *is* a whopping bog example of a Christian
trinitarian theology with an unchanging *and* biblical God. So far,
you have only repeated your transparent and trivially dismissed
error. Augustine's theology is a counterexample to your claim.
And this is so because he reads
the Jesus of Matthew differently than you apparently do. Jesus is
God in a sense, and Man in a sense to Augustine. The Man-sense
changes in time, the God-sense doesn't. You keep repeating that to
Augustine, Jesus is God, but has a biography in Matthew. And you
keep being wrong, because it isn't true that to Augustine Jesus
is God. Augustine doesn't stop with that. "The Son" is not Jesus.
Jesus had flesh. The substance of "The Son" isn't corporeal, isn't
flesh. Ergo, Jesus and The Son are not identical. Get it?
I said:
I'd *love* for somebody to point out to me where
it says in either Matthew, Mark, or Luke where Jesus is
God. Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
it says that.
Silke:
Why no offer on Paul?
I said:
Isn't this obvious? Because that *is* what Augustine
is doing. If you are permitted to invoke Paul in order to
read Matthew differently than you would if you just
had Matthew, then so can Augustine. You are either
both misreading (or is it "misreading"?), or neither
of you necessarily is, and his reading, given its scope
and logical coherence, begins looking better and better.
Silke:
Paul, like Augustine, wants to force a heterogeneous source into a
coherent reading. I don't.
I said:
Fine. Then Jesus ain't God, and you have no tool with
which to make him so.
Silke:
I have no interest in claiming that Jesus is God, or that there is God.
This contradicts your original claim that an unchanging God isn't biblical,
as exemplified by Jesus.
Silke:
The point, as perhaps you will recall, was the following: I claimed that
Augustine fails in coherently presenting an immutable God because he
says things about this God that are in conflict with immutability. I
further claimed that Augustine's reading of an immutable God is in
conflict with the bible _as a whole_, i.e. as _he_ wants to read it.
You are wrong about both points, since he does manage to read
the Bible as a coherent with an unchanging God the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Now, fine if you haven't read Augustine and don't know
or understand in what sense he means these things. But, the passage I
quoted for you at length from the opening of _The Trinity_ tells
you exactly how he does it---by reading parts of the Bible which,
to the unthoughtful and unfaithful reader might look like they refer to
God's changeableness in a different way.
So, it's pretty obvious he *does* read it like he wants to,
and that *there is* enough latitude in the text for him to do so.
Silke:
The only thing that matters concerning the first point, then, is
_Augustine's_ take on Jesus. As as far as A is concerned, J is God.
Flesh in time. Mutable. Mutating.
No, as far as Augustine is concerned. J is not God, because not
identical with the Son. Insofar as he has flesh, that flesh is mutating and
mutable,
and, therefore, not God, neither God the Father, God the Son, nor
God the Holy Ghost, because, for Augustine, the substance of
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost is
*incorporeal* and unchanging.
Silke:
As to the second, moggin and Jeff have given you a passage to
comment on.
I thought I already did comment on it---for Augustine, God doesn't
change. So, passages in the Old Testament which seem to show
God changing his mind, showing emotion, showing his hind
parts to Moses, shielding Moses with his hand, etc., are for Augustine
either riddles or metaphors appropriate to the primitive minds
that received them, or are not actually God, but in-time, historical
manifestations of God through the medium of angels and such.
Silke:
Which is not to say that my reading is more valuable --
obviously, theirs are, by pretty much any standard you can
think up. Except for one.
I said:
We have just established that according to you, Jesus isn't
God, since in order for you to say that he is God, you
*will* have to force a heterogenous source into a coherent
reading.
Silke:
According to me, nobody is God. Which is entirely irrelevant. The
question, to repeat, is a) does the Bible in its entirety present an
immutable God?, b) is Augustine's account of the immutable God
consistent with his reading of the Bible in its entirety.
The answer to a) is that it depends entirely on how you read the thing.
If you take certain things said by St. Paul as your starting point, then,
yes, the Bible may be read in its entirety so as to present an immutable
God.
Obviously, because, yes, Augustine's account of the immutable
God is consistent with his reading of the Bible in its entirety. So,
Augustine's trinitarian theology is the example of a reading of the
Bible as a whole which is logically coherent and which accounts
for the passages in the Bible which might seem otherwise
to indicate change on the part of God.
Silke:
Perhaps you can give some indication that you understand what
you're arguing about.
I understand perfectly what I'm arguing about. You dismissed
Augustine's reading with a wave of your hand as unbiblical. In
fact, it is highly biblical.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 10th of May, 2002
I said:
Hell, John, too, go ahead and tell me where exactly
it says that.
Don:
"And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us."
presumably refers to somebody, no?
But, why the poetry, the ellipticality? I mean, why not just
say "Jesus is God"? You can't pretend that the only interpretation
here is that Jesus is God. Why not from God? Why isn't
the Word subordinate to God, a messenger therefrom,
a prophet, or an angel? I mean, Augustine spends a lot
of time in _The Trinity_ arguing these things various
thinkable and actual heresies, so I don't think that one verse
is enough.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)